Shack on Caddo Lake

A fishing shack standing out over the water on Caddo Lake — one of the old camps that have dotted the lake's bayous and sloughs for generations. Caddo has a long history as a fishing and hunting ground; it was also, in 1911, the site of the first oil wells ever drilled over water, and the lake has carried working structures of one kind or another out into its cypress for more than a century.

Photographed on Caddo Lake in the summer of 1998, in black and white. The weathered wood of the camps, the dark water, the moss-hung cypress behind — it's a scene that asks for monochrome, and the absence of color makes the shack feel as old as it is.