Tide Lines: A Photographic Record of Louisiana’s Disappearing Coast

By Ben Depp and Monique Verdin

In Tide Lines: A Photographic Record of Louisiana’s Disappearing Coast, Ben Depp’s photographs capture the beauty, complexity, and rapid destruction of south Louisiana. Once formed by sediment deposited by the Mississippi River, the Louisiana coast is now quickly eroding. Two thousand square miles of wetlands have returned to open water over the past eighty years.

Depp’s photographs communicate weather and seasonal changes—like the shifting high-water line, color temperature, and softness of light. A careful observer will notice coastal flora and distinguish living cypress trees from those that have been killed by saltwater intrusion, or see the patterns made by wave energy on barrier island beaches and sediment carried through freshwater diversions from the Mississippi River.

With a powered paraglider, Depp flies between ten and ten thousand feet above the ground. He spends hours in the air, camera in hand, waiting for the brief moments when the first rays of sunlight mix with cool predawn light and illuminate forms in the grass, or when evening light sculpts fragments of marsh and geometric patterns of human enterprise—canals, oil platforms, pipelines, and roads. Featuring an introduction by Monique Verdin and over fifty color images, Tide Lines is an intense bird's-eye survey that depicts south Louisiana from an unfamiliar perspective, prompting the viewer to reconsider the value of this vanishing, otherworldly landscape.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
• Release date: Jan 23, 2023
• ISBN: 9781496843951

Ben Depp

Ben Depp is an artist and National Geographic Explorer whose work centers on the environment. Using a powered paraglider and a nineteen-foot wooden sailboat to access remote parts of Louisiana, Depp documents coastal erosion from a new perspective.

Book preview

TIDE LINES

TIDE LINES

A Photographic Record of Louisiana’s Disappearing Coast

BEN DEPP

Introduction by Monique Verdin

University Press of Mississippi / Jackson

Support for this publication was provided by Furthermore: a program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund.

The University Press of Mississippi is the scholarly publishing agency of the Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning: Alcorn State University, Delta State University, Jackson State University, Mississippi State University, Mississippi University for Women, Mississippi Valley State University, University of Mississippi, and University of Southern Mississippi.

www.upress.state.ms.us

The University Press of Mississippi is a member of the Association of University Presses.

Copyright © 2023 by Ben Depp

Photographs copyright © 2023 by Ben Depp

Introduction copyright © 2023 by Ben Monique Verdin

Map by M. Roy Cartography

All rights reserved

Printed in China

First printing 2023

∞

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022941457

Hardback ISBN 978-1-4968-4391-3

Epub single ISBN 978-1-4968-4395-1

Epub institutional ISBN 978-1-4968-4392-0

PDF single ISBN 978-1-4968-4394-4

PDF institutional ISBN 978-1-4968-4393-7

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

CONTENTS

Introduction

Photographs

Artist Statement

Map of Photographs

Captions

Acknowledgments

INTRODUCTION

Monique Verdin

There is something magical and primordial about being in a coastal marsh when darkness gives way to light at sunrise in South Louisiana. Sometimes, when the weather is right and the skies are clear, it feels like you’re watching the sun being birthed from the inner belly