User:Kaitlynferr/Clarence John Laughlin

Laughlin’s personal projects and large collection of images focused mostly on places and the architecture located there. His most well known works focus on New Orleans, but that wasn’t the only place that he photographed, he also took images in Chicago, Salt Lake City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, St. Louis, San Antonio, and Little Rock. With the photobook being the ultimate goal and measure for success for photographers, Laughlin achieved this in 1948 when Ghosts Along the Mississippi: The Magic of the Old Houses of Louisiana was first published. The book features 100 black and white images of photographs that are focused around the architecture of the south during the plantation era. To Laughlin, these buildings represented the ambition and power behind the people that built those structures as well as the price that this objective cost to slaves that were forced to work there. Through this book, Laughlin was interested in representing the lengthy history of Lousiana and the feeling of life there, while also recognizing the history of slavery as well as the imaginary situations that he created.