New Orleans, I raise my glass to you, the greatest city in the world, have a cold one on me. It's been a long 5 years. Let's have a drink and a laugh, sometimes that's all we can do.
Let's drink to the hard working people
Let's drink of the lowly of birth
Raise your glass to the good and the evil
Let's drink to the salt of the earth
Say a prayer for the common foot soldier
Spare a thought for his back breaking work
Spare a part for his wife and his children
Who burn the fires and who still till the earth
And when I look into the this faceless crowd
A swirling mass of gray blue
Black and white
They don't look real to me
In fact, we all look so strange
Raise your glass to the hard working people
Let's drink to the uncounted heads
Let's think of the wavering millions
Who need leading but get gamblers instead
Spare a thought for the stay-at-home voter
His empty eyes gaze at strange beauty shows
And a parade of the gray suited grafters
A choice of cancer or polio
And when I look into this faceless crowd
A swirling mass of grays and
Black and white
They don't look real to you
Or do we look too strange
Let's drink to the hard working people
Let's think of the lowly of birth
Spare a thought for the rag taggy people
Let's drink to the salt of the earth
Let's drink to the hard working people
Let's drink to the salt of the earth
Let's drink to the three thousand million
Let's think of the humble of birth
-The Stones
8/29/10
Raise Your Glass To The Good And The Evil
4/11/10
Watch Treme Tonight!
Don't forget to watch Treme tonight. 
Very excited to have a bunch of photographs in the opening sequence of the show and when David Simon says things like this you know it's gonna be fucking brilliant. There are only a few whom I trust to dive in and tell the story of a post Katrina New Orleans and David Simon is surely at the top of that list.
“New Orleans to me … it’s a triumph of American urban culture. It’s the best an American city can be, and also the worst in a lot of ways. It has created a culture that has gone around the world. If you look at what our greatest export would be — culturally or politically or socially — from the American experiment, you’d have to put African-American music probably at the top of the list. You can be anywhere from Katmandu to Johannesburg and you walk into a bar and if they’re playing a tape machine they’ve got Michael Jackson or (John) Coltrane or Otis Redding or something (playing). That whole notion of African rhythms and the pentatonic scale meeting European instrumentation and arrangement comes from about 12 square blocks in New Orleans. So this is a city that’s essential in the American psyche, and yet we all witnessed the near-destruction of it. It was the closest thing to the destruction of an American city since the San Francisco earthquake. It’s coming back on its own terms as best as it can, with a lot of concern from some quarters, but a lot of indifference from much of the country. And that’s a fascinating story to me. In a way, ‘The Wire’ implied what was at stake with the American city, but ‘Treme’ is actually an examination of what it is — what living as disparate, different people compacted in an urban area can offer.”
-David Simon
3/26/10
Treme
I am thrilled to have a bunch of photographs from my work in New Orleans featured in the opening sequence of David Simon's new HBO series Treme which premieres April 11. Everyone who reads this blog probably knows how much of a Wire fan I am and how much I admire and respect David Simon and it is a great honor to be a part of his new series. Everyone who reads this blog probably also knows how much New Orleans means to me. Sometimes it is difficult for me to express in words the way I feel about New Orleans without going on and on, but I tell people who have never been there before that I have been all over America and New Orleans is unlike any other city I have been and every time I am there it feels more and more like home and gets harder and harder to leave. Simon eloquently describes this feeling in a recent Times article and it is fucking dead on:
“There's a thing about being capable of a great moment. This city is capable of moments unlike any moments you’ll ever experience in life. To see an Indian come down the street in full regalia on St. Joseph’s Night on an unlit street of messed-up shotgun houses and one burned-out car, and he’s the most beautiful thing on the planet, and everything around him is falling down. It’s a glorious instant of human endeavor. It’s duende from the Spanish, chills on the back of your neck, and then the next minute it’s gone. Lots of American places used to make things. Detroit used to make cars. Baltimore used to make steel and ships. New Orleans still makes something. It makes moments. I don’t mean that to sound flippant, and I don’t mean it to sound more or less than what it is, but they’re artists with a moment, they can take a moment and make it into something so transcendent that you’re not quite sure that it happened or that you were a part of it.”
A big thank you Karen for making this all happen.
3/9/09
Housing Crisis? What You Talking 'Bout Willis?
There was a great article in yesterday's Times Sunday Magazine about the national foreclosure crisis focusing in Cleveland.
"In the ensuing years, the city's real estate was transformed into an Alice-In-Wonderland-like landscape. Local officials began keeping track of foreclosed homes by placing red dots on large wall maps. Some corners of the map, like Slavic Village, are now so pack with red dots they look like puddles of blood. The first question outsiders ask is, Where has everyone gone?" .... "The county has lost nearly 100,000 people over the past seven years, the largest exodus in recent memory outside of New Orleans Parish."
-Alex Kotlowitz
And to expand on this article, here are some of my images of this housing crisis from New Orleans.
10/16/08
9/18/08
Obama: The Historic Campaign In Photographs Opens Tonight
Photographs I made of Barack Obama in New Orleans are featured in
Obama: The Historic Campaign in Photographs
Curated by Deborah Willis & Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe
Opening Reception TONIGHT:
Thursday, September 18, 6:00 - 8:00pm
Leica Gallery
670 Broadway (Two blocks north of Houston)
New York City 10012
212-777-3051
9/10/08
The Genius Of Roy Ferdinand
Some of my work from New Orleans is featured in the current issue of Triple Canopy which is entirely devoted to New Orleans. There is a lot of interesting and intelligent work showcased here that far surpasses the usual run of the mill New Orleans stuff on the anniversary of Katrina and it deserves a look.
The diamond in this issue is the feature on the life and work of Roy Ferdinand. While the harsh reality of the streets may be the subject, his compositions seem to draw great influence from Renaissance painting as they throw the viewer right there into the mix. The sophistication and beauty in each scene take you by the hand and don't ever let go as you run and dance your whole way through. There is a sense of reality and first hand experience that oozes from all of Ferdinand's work, you can trust him as he takes you along his journey. 
"My story began a long time ago. Thirty-eight years to be exact. My name is Roy Ferdinand and in these following pages, I will try to give you an idea of what my life has been like. I make no claims to importance or fame. But I will tell you, whomever should read this, I’m so incredibly saddened by the current turn of events. "
-From the sketchbook of Roy Ferdinand 
