Fonville Winans

Fonville Winans (full name Theodore Fonville Winans) was a noted American photographer whose black-and-white images captured south Louisiana people and places. He is almost always referred to by his first name.

Fonville was born on August 22, 1911, in Mexico, Missouri, and spent part of his childhood in Fort Worth, Texas, where as a senior in high school he purchased his first camera, a Kodak 3A model. Armed with this camera, Fonville shortly won $15 in a photography contest, which stirred his interest in pursuing photography as a career.

In 1928, Fonville moved to Louisiana to work in construction, and it was during this time that he fell in love with the state. Fonville began photographing the state's southern swamps and grassy coastal wetlands, as well as the people who inhabited them. "Louisiana was my Africa, my South America," he recalled. [Ruth Laney, "Fonville's LSU," "LSU Magazine", September 1987, n.p.]

In 1934 he became a student at Louisiana State University, where he majored in journalism and performed in the school's brass choir. He often photographed on LSU campus and had images published in the "Reveille" student newspaper and in the school's yearbook, "Gumbo".

Around 1940 Fonville opened his own photography studio in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. "I had a side porch I covered with tar paper," he recalled, "and made into a darkroom. I used my bathroom for plumbing fixtures. I used the dining room to make portraits. I photographed several important people, and word got around pretty fast." [Ruth Laney, "Fonville's LSU," "LSU Magazine", September 1987, n.p.]

Eventually he established a solid reputation as a wedding and studio portrait photographer, capturing images of local beauties and state politicians. Yet Fonville became best known for his images of south Louisiana's rugged outdoors, as well as its fishermen and swamp dwellers.

Fonville died in 1992.

In 1995, LSU Press issued "Fonville Winans' Louisiana: Politics, People, and Places", a collection of over one hundred images by Fonville with a foreword by Louisiana politico James Carville and an afterword by noted contemporary Louisiana photographer C.C. Lockwood. [Cyril E. Vetter and Fonville Winans, "Fonville Winans' Louisiana: Politics, People, and Places" (Baton Rouge, La.: LSU Press, 1995).]

In 1999, Fonville's studio joined the National Register of Historic Places. ["Louisiana History," Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association 2002.]

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