Allen Hess
Oak Alley Plantation, River Road, Vacherie, Louisiana1983, printed 1989
selenium toned contact print
7 9/16 x 9 1/2 in.
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Consolidated Natural Gas Company Foundation
Orderly ranks of veteran live oaks converge symmetrically on the two-story high white columns of an antebellum Greek Revival plantation house along Louisiana’s Great River Road. Frozen in time, like the portrait of an ancestor, the house is suspended between the storied past and its current reincarnation as a bed and breakfast.
