The Southeastern Architectural Archive (SEAA) at Tulane University in New Orleans recently opened an exhibit featuring the work of Phillip Marin Denman The exhibits includes a photographic essay of the Laurel Valley Plantation in Thibodaux, Louisiana, over the course of 40 years.
In 1978, Denman began documenting the more than 100 buildings on the plantation grounds. He returned in 2005 and again in 2017 to record the condition of the plantation and the remaining structures. Kevin Williams, an SEAA archivist and the exhibit curator, believes that Denman’s photography of former slave housing and other types of worker housing for plantations is of great importance to researchers since so few of these buildings remain. The photographs also serve as an example of how plantation life in the Deep South changed from the antebellum era through the present.
The exhibit will remain on display at the university until June 14, 2019.
