“There was great advantage in having family members—with the aid of willing friends and neighbors—working together, planting and transplanting, stripping and curing. Each generation passed its secrets along to the next, which allowed aficionados to swear that producing a fine perique was like trying to make the perfect gumbo—an art form.”
Perique
Photographs by Charles Martin
with essays by Mary Ann Sternberg and John H. Lawrence
A documentary photographer’s reverent depiction of the process of cultivating and curing a unique variety of tobacco in Cajun Louisiana.
Perique: Photographs by Charles Martin
HNOC 2012
softcover • 9" × 10" • 104 pp.
50 b&w images
ISBN 978-0-917860-62-1
$25.00
Perique, prized by connoisseurs as the strongest and most flavorful of tobacco varietals, is cultivated only one place on earth: a thirty-square-mile tract of land in St. James Parish, Louisiana. Harvested, bunched, and stemmed by hand, the tobacco is pressure-cured for a year in whiskey barrels. The labor-intensive cultivation process dates to the early 19th century; its rituals have descended as occupational folklore through a small group of St. James Parish families.
Photographer Charles Martin (b. 1961) spent eight years documenting the tradition of his forebears. Vulnerability lends urgency to this study: only a handful of working farms remain dedicated to perique cultivation, and fewer and fewer young people embrace the agricultural lifestyle of their parents and grandparents.
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