Clarence John Laughlin (1905-1985) was a prolific self-taught photographer who spent half a century creating disturbing, enigmatic, richly textured, and hauntingly beautiful B&W images of New Orleans and Louisiana. His double-exposed abstractions, moody still-lives, imagined cemetery scenes, studies in spiritual decay, and ruined ante bellum architecture constitute a body of work unique in photography. A completely original religious/spiritual/romantic/magical/mystical surrealistic synthesis of ideas and themes that would define the future direction of Southern Photography. Sometimes described by his contemporaries as having the mind of Edgar Allan Poe combined with the photographic eye of Man Ray, Laughlin was one of the first American surrealists. The area he photographed has always been a symbolic, mythic, wonderfully romantic, and beautifully surreal region.


Laughlin was born in Lake Charles, and spent most of his life in New Orleans. He didn’t start out to be photographer, but rather entertained ambitions of becoming a novelist. Poverty and a lack of formal education doomed his literary plans, but not his enthusiasm for writing, he wrote copiously until his death. Laughlin taught himself photography in the mid thirties, influenced by the images of Paul Strand, Stieglitz, Weston, Eugéne Atget, and Man Ray. His first one-man show was at the Delgado Museum, (now the New Orleans Museum of Art) in 1936. During the early forties he shot fashion for Vogue in New York City. In 1948 Laughlin published his best-known work Ghosts Along the Mississippi a seminal book of magnificent photographs of the River Road Plantations that went through more than twenty printings.

Laughlin's photographs have appeared in Harper's Bazaar, American Heritage, Architectural Review, Life, Aperture, and Look magazines, and in more than 200 exhibitions at such prestigious venues as the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Smithsonian Institution, the Los Angeles County Museum; and the George Eastman House. A major retrospective of his photographs was presented by the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1973

Laughlin was named a Research Associate at the University of Louisville in 1968 and the majority of his more than 17,000 sheet-film negatives were donated to the University of Louisville Photographic Archives in 1970, the remainder of his negatives are held (along with most of his writings) by the Historic New Orleans Collection, which produced a 1997 retrospective exhibition of his work that resulted in the book “Haunter of Ruins” The Photography of Clarence John Laughlin. Only rarely does a single book of photographs provide an insight into the importance of Southern Photography as a part of the American fine art pantheon, and more seldom still into the potent influence wielded by one obscure New Orleans surrealist in shaping the aesthetic that is Southern Photography.

Clarence John Laughlin’s images in Haunter of Ruins reflect the mind and eye of an artist who is clearly in touch with all the important themes in Southern Photography; faith/religion, death/loss/decay, nostalgia/the past, mysticism/magic/superstition and respect/love for the cultural richness/history of a particular region. Laughlin's work predates (by decades in some cases) the better-known works of Southern Photographers like Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Jerry Uelsmann, William Eggleston, and Lee Friedlander. The images in Haunter of Ruins are a small representative sampling of Laughlin’s vision, a romantic and surreal "New Orleans Gothic" plus some simpler and more direct architectural studies.

During a 1997 visit to New Orleans I had the great good fortune to wander into "A Gallery for Fine Photography" 322 Royal St. and see a poster for the Haunter of Ruins exhibit at the Historic New Orleans Collection (just up Royal Street at 533) I spent a couple of hours viewing Laughlin’s incredible B&W photographs while my wife and a friend visited the Voo-Doo Museum. Being able to see Laughlin's original museum quality prints was an incredible experience.

I have a good idea what “The Big Easy” looked like when Clarence John Laughlin was wandering around with his camera, because I lived in New Orleans in 1971, years before the World’s Fair and the "Industrial Strength" tourism that followed. The quarter was pretty “funky” in those days, the Jax Brewery was still making beer, pay phones cost a nickel, and Buster Holmes was still serving real “Old New Orleans” Red Beans and Rice at his restaurant on the corner of Burgundy and Orleans.

If you find yourself in New Orleans and want to search for some vestiges of the old French Quarter, and the sort of settings that might have inspired Laughlin, load up your camera and check out these attractions. St. Roch Shrine and Cemeteries 1725 St. Roch Ave. (945-5961) The chapel became a popular pilgrimage site for the sick and suffering after the Civil War and many were miraculously cured. They left behind a strange collection of crutches, canes, false limbs, fake eyeballs, plaster organs and other weird and bizarre items, which now fill the chapel. Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop (941 Bourbon St.) This quiet neighborhood bar may be the oldest building in the Mississippi Valley, Jean Lafitte used it to sell goods plundered on the high seas. The building looks ancient, like many of those featured in Laughlin's images of the French Quarter. Laughlin often used New Orlean's cemeteries as a setting for his images. Cemetery Row (Canal Street at City Park Avenue) offers a chance to visit several of the city's most interesting cemeteries (St. Louis #1 and #2, the cities oldest cemeteries can be risky unless you go with an organized tour) Cypress Grove, Greenwood, and Odd Fellows can be easily seen in an afternoon, photography is permitted, and the crowds present almost everywhere else in town are usually absent.

Drive from Donaldsonville (just north of New Orleans) to Baton Rouge along old LA. Highway One. The ”River Road” is the most historic collection of Ante Bellum homes and working plantations in the country. Famous homes like Destrehan, San Francisco, Oak Alley, Tezcuco, Houmas House, and Nottoway line both sides of the river. These magnificent old Plantation Houses (and others like them) were photographed by Laughlin for his book Ghosts Along the Mississippi. Photographer Duane Michals could have been talking about Clarence John Laughlin when he said "Photography deals exquisitely with appearances, but nothing is what it appears to be". Buy a copy of Haunter of Ruins The Photography of Clarence John Laughlin, before you visit New Orleans and you'll see America's most fascinating city from a new and totally different perspective.


Haunter of Ruins
The Photography of Clarence John Laughlin
69 Duotone photographs
112 Pages
ISBN 0-8212-2361-5
Bullfinch Press 1997
$40.00



If you enjoyed reading this review, please check out my other photographic book reviews:

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“Not Fade Away” The Rock and Roll Photography of Jim Marshall

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Wynn Bullock “The Enchanted Landscape” Photographs 1940-1975

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