“ I tell what I experience, and anything I pass on truthfully has to be valid for other people. If I tell a story very personally, it will be valid for more people than if I try to tell it in universal terms.”

Pg. 41 The Anarchy of Imagination “Reacting to what you experience”

It is one thing to go see the circus when it comes to town, but it is a totally different experience when you choose to live in the middle of it.

When I was a boy I remember my father listening to the radio broadcasts of a “hellfire and brimstone “ Baptist minister preaching from Bourbon Street. Even at that young age I knew there was something about New Orleans that was enticingly forbidden as my father would warn me repeatedly “never go to that wicked city.” Over time my curiosity about the Crescent City became greater and greater.

I moved to New Orleans on the first day of hurricane season in 1998. It was miserably hot, even for June, and the realtor who had taken care of so many details of the move was waiting at the house with beer and po-boys. I was home.

New Orleans is a tough town. Visiting New Orleans as a tourist is nothing like living there. New Orleans has never embraced change and if you move there you must be willing to accommodate her, and not the other way around. 

I have had my highest highs and my lowest lows in New Orleans, and I would rather have had my worst day there than my best day anywhere else. She gets under your skin, into your system, and very quickly you are seduced by her exotic charms.

The entire collection of my New Orleans images came within two inches of rising flood waters from being completely destroyed. Much of Eastaboga did not survive. The images in the New Orleans collection represent a very personal record of a time and a place. I made these photographs not as a detached observer but as an active participant immersed in the drama of life in this legendary city.