le Temps

I suppose a lot of the sensationalism of the hurricane and flooding has receeded with the waters in New Orleans, and the media has begun to move onto coverage that lambasts the government's reaction rather than continue specific stories of the tragic matters at hand. Many are already talking about the rebuilding efforts, yet the rebuilding efforts lead to a quagmire. What will a rebuilt New Orleans look like? feel like? sound like? taste like? NO was a city like no other, a city teetering delicately between excess and chaos, of life and decay. In fact, it was the vibrant life found in the streets and alleys between the dilapidated and crumbling structures that gave the place so much distinction. It was the sights and sounds and tastes of cultures crashing...of artists struggling, of paint peeling, mosquitos buzzing, music making, gumbo boiling, buildings leaning, streets crumbling. In New Orleans, character lived in decay, and the decay of New Orleans made a comfy home to the ghosts of civil war soldiers, voodoo priests, rivermen, jazzmen, mardi-gras kings, aristocrats and down-and-outers. It seems to me that a cleaned-up, spic-and-span, adult disneyland/epcot center new New Orleans is a New Orleans without its most integral parts, a city without its soul.

Upon the first few months of living in New Orleans I created a body of photographs- over 600 instamatic polaroids- that documented the decay, and consequently the character, of my new home. I wrote an artist's statement to accompany the images and i have copied a portion of it below, followed by a few of the photographs:

"...as I made day-long jaunts around the city I photographed the things that I immediately responded to, and I began to collect images that recorded the color, decay and texture of New Orleans. Upon my exploration of these motifs, I began to explore the abundance of hand painted pre-media signage that can be found all over the city. The romantic, hand painted signage tells of a time gone by and exudes a sort of Camp aesthetic. When approaching a hand painted sign, one is confronted with the mysterious personal mark left by someone gone before and is left with nostalgia of a time gone by. However, not all of the signage I have photographed is of a past era. Much of it was created recently, and tells of an socio-economic group of city dwellers and entrepreneurs that hand paint signs for its economical benefits or for its unique flavor.

No matter the year in which the sign was produced, the tale-tell marks of the harsh climate and general urban decay are always present. The decay of these signs is readily apprehendable, and the temporality of the subject matter I have photographed is matched with the use of the temporal, non-archival Polaroid materials that I have chosen to work with."


this wall was demolished so a new wal-mart could be built in the historic warehouse district in 2004.


a whole foods market now sits over this spot of pavement in uptown.


723 basin street, now flooded


the clown house, now abandoned


vernacular


the rabbi of the 9th ward, now drowned


the battle of tchoupitoulas, lost to racism and greed


little debbie...the tasty maiden of central city


in the irish channel

In the end, I think the "temporal" is what New Orleans is all about. Its a city where you can lounge on your porch and watch the present casually slip into the past, you can wander the alleys of the Quarter and imagine by-gone eras, you can climb the levees and watch the riverboats pass you by. And then the hazy hot sun will dip into the horizon and the moon will take its place and a cool breeze will slip through the streets like a whisper or a ghost. After night falls the music will start, and even though the songs have been around for generations, not a single one of them has been played the same way twice. Its jazz, man. Its improv. Its the moment. And its New Orleans. Its the romance of the passage of time, it is decay and gris-gris and ghosts. Its somehow unchanging yet different every day. And no matter how New Orleans is rebuilt, time and the river and the humidity and the ghosts will have their say, and the city's old soul will still be alive to let "le bon temps roule."