William Guion

What began as a learning exercise, a long-term photographic study of a single subject, has grown into a "calling," a four-decade-long pilgrimage deep into the heart of Louisiana’s live oak country to find and document the state's oldest oaks, many growing before European settlement of this region. In the process, he came to know the old oaks as sentient beings that are an essential part of the history, culture, and ecology of the Southern landscape—and the heart of Southern life.

In his books, author and photographer William Guion shares his experiences in search of ancient and historic Southern live oak trees and the historic landscapes where they grow. Every old oak has a story to tell...through his haunting “oak portraits” and personal essays, you are transported deep into the heart of Louisiana’s misty and mysterious bayou country. There you will wander into moss-draped corridors of ancient oak alleys, through fog-shrouded oak groves, and into dazzling foggy mornings and ghostly golden twilights to commune with these iconic elder trees.

Guion has published a total of six books of his photographs and writings. His newest offering, "A Return to Heartwood – A Search for the Heart of Live Oak Country," is scheduled for release in late 2022. It is a retrospective in images and stories of his forty-year-long journey with the Southern live oak.

His photographic images are contained in a variety of corporate and private collections across the country as well as the public collections of the Louisiana Folklife Museum, the Louisiana State Museum in Baton Rouge, and the New Orleans Museum of Art. His photographs have been used for several book jacket covers (for Simon and Schuster, Random House, Crown Books, W.W, Norton Books, Harper Collins, and Warner Books) and in the feature film (The Wishing Tree starring Alfre Woodard, 1999).