Matthew D. White and Big Vision Media Partner to Raise Funds for "The End of the Great River: Photographs of the Lower Mississippi River Delta"

BATON ROUGE, LA, September 15, 2010 (Press-News.org) Matthew D. White and Big Vision Media are currently seeking funds to continue White's photographic documentation of the Mississippi River Delta, from Port Sulphur in Plaquemines Parish, LA south to the end of the three passes that drain the river into the Gulf of Mexico — Pass a Loutre; South Pass; and Southwest Pass. This delta, full of history, culture, and industry, is sparsely populated and rarely seen in detail by outsiders, but is a landscape of vast, simplistic beauty.

White began photography for the project in the spring of 2000, shot on both black and white film and in color digital, and continues to the present day. As lower Plaquemines Parish was decimated by Hurricane Katrina (as well as having quite a long history with other notable storms of the past), it has been proposed by some involved with coastal rebuilding efforts that the area be eventually abandoned and allowed to slowly sink into the Gulf over time.

"In this collection I have shot nearly every named location in lower Plaquemines Parish and have what is a very detailed and thorough collection of images" said White. "One such location is Pilottown, the historic home of the Bar Pilots, which I shot on black and white film in January, 2005. After it was almost completely destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, I returned there in April of 2008 to find this one-of- a-kind town, the last manned outpost on the Mississippi River, barely hanging on; a few pilot houses were being rebuilt, while the remainder of former homes along the river completely vanished".

The goal of this photo collection is to document for posterity this time and place in the landscape — one that is slowly fading away, perhaps forever. The area was also impacted by disaster when oil washed ashore during the recent Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill. A touring exhibition of images from the collection opened at the Port of New Orleans in December 2009 and is currently showing at The Wealth Planners Gallery in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, http://www.juliebuckner.com/wealthplannersgallery.html). The exhibit will continue to tour in 2011.

Funds are needed now for a new phase of work to shoot endangered historical landmarks in some of the more remote and hard to reach locations of The Mississippi River Delta such as Pilottown, LA, the last outpost on the Mississippi River, Fort St. Philip, a decommissioned masonry fort on the east bank of the Mississippi River, and an endangered lighthouse - and to expand the exhibit collection. For more information see the Project Website at http://www.endofthegreatriver.com and the fundraising site at IndieGoGo, a crowd funding platform that helps creative people raise funds for independent projects, http://www.indiegogo.com/The-End-of-the-Great-River.

About Matthew White
Matthew White (http://www.matthewwhitestudio.com ) fell in love with photography at an early age. He has lived and worked as a freelance photographer and musician, after receiving a Bachelor's Degree in music from Berklee College of Music in Boston, and a Master's Degree in jazz studies from the University of New Orleans, a summa cum laude graduate. White's large scale photographic work includes "The Louisiana Collection", fine arts documentation of south Louisiana shot alternately in 35mm black-and-white and large-scale color digital and "South Florida Unseen", landscapes tracing the limits of urban sprawl and agricultural areas along the Everglades watershed. His most recent solo exhibitions include, "The End of the Great River: Photographs of the Lower Mississippi River Delta" and "Cameron Parish". Winner in the Print Center 82nd International Competition, his work has also been featured in the Grand Isle Juried Art Exhibit, The New Orleans Photo Alliance Elemental/Environmental Space Exhibit, and as part of a permanent museum exhibit for Parks Canada in New Brunswick. He was invited by the U.S. Department of State to present his images during the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and he most recently partnered with Lighthawk and the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana on a series of aerial flyovers to take pictures of the endangered Louisiana coast.

About Big Vision Media
Big Vision Media, (http://www.bigvisionmedia.com) is a social entrepreneurship focused on inspiring and empowering creative media based projects in endangered and disaster impacted locales. The company's mission is to ignite wise action, positive change and new vision through transformational media.