Coming in late here as I was away on vacations…. I want number 19 for me :):):)… what an amazing shot!!!! Always inspiring to see your work Chris!!!…. Your previous essay “After the storm” is one of the few essays here I have gone back several times to look at again…. I think you have not quite yet created the same magic here in my view…. I felt your work in “After the storm” was SO powerful, aesthetically very accomplished but at the same time, it was transpiring from the work that you were a surfer yourself…. there was you in that essay, the emotions, the surf, the waves, the sand, the friendship, all that seem so real and felt…. the work here is equally accomplished from pure aesthetic standpoint but maybe, just maybe you seem a tiny bit more of a spectator here…we are less drawn inside…. some pictures definitely are successfully accomplishing this but some maybe not as much while still colorful, etc… Hard to give you advice here but maybe think less about the aesthetic part of the picture (you are a master there anyay!!) and give us more of the emotions, madness etc… I have no doubt you will get this as this is work in progress and you are not done with the topic… I am surre you must have got the madness part in Rio with David, Lance and Co :):)…. I wish I could have been there…. Take care and hope to see you sometimes….

Cheers,

Eric

The first time I came here, I did not have time to read, blow up, or linger and I quickly skimmed through it. My initial thought was along the line of Herve’s, but now that I have taken spent some time with it, I don’t feel that way at all.

I think you did a great job, one that rose beyond conventional celebration photography.

Even so, Charles Peterson’s statement really hit me – that could be so powerful, to zero in on one – but no reason not to take the broad shot as well.

Since I became aware of Mardi Gras, I have always wanted to go.

I don’t know that it will ever happen, but thanks for the look.

it will be great to see how this pans out…very curious to see your take on the relationship between Venice and N.O. and Rio and I hope some of the Carribean carnivals (you need to come here for the Trinidad show in july)….anyway….they all are defined by very different spiritual and political and historical traditions, even though most just see a bunch of lush bodies dancing…

for this work, as i tried to describe, the heart is there…the brilliant #2 and #26, as well as #4 (i love that you’ve shot folk in their hoodies without fanfare and within the dream-march toward the dying in that calypso tune of water). #19 (another of my fave images, for all it’s politics and that young child with the skull mask against the righteous painted shadows)…and thank goodness you included native americans…

i am waiting to see the post-mardi stuff and all the madness that leads up to it….

and another funeral….for isn’t mardi gras really a funeral to begin with, ushering us past the suffering? :))

hope folks read the statement too :)

bb

I went down to New Orleans last year as part of this long-term Carnival project, but kinda fell for the place, as people often do. Even thought about moving there. I agree with those of you who think the project requires a little something extra…it’s just a question of what direction to take it. And that, honestly, I’m not really sure about. Yet. New Orleans is definitely not finished with me.

There are undoubtedly a few photos here that I put in just because they are pretty pictures….and many more I had to cut:) Geez, you think there’s a lot of party people here? I got 500 gigs of party people:)

My approach and intention for the series has been to create something more archetypal/mythological/symbolic etc rather than photojournalistic. I do have a number of more documentary-style shots, but not enough good ones for them to seem out of place in this essay. Next time I go down and spend some quality time there I’ll go a little deeper. We’ll see what happens. I want to keep the feel of what I’ve got so far but keep working the edges and capture a little more of the grit and funk of New Orleans, along with the spirit. It’s moved just far enough beyond strictly a piece about Carnival, although I think the Carnival spirit is something that really imbues everyday life in New Orleans, and the concept of what Carnival actually “means” is infinitely complex, as I am beginning to discover.

Anyway, I thank those of you who have commented so far, and please keep it coming.

–chris

Best,

CP

A friend in needs a friend indeed,
A friend with weed is better,
A friend with breasts and all the rest,
A friend who’s dressed in leather,…
—————————————-
Thats better than pillows…just a suggestion;)

Well done! The technique, energy, along with the great moments captured here really carry the images in this essay, both artistically and journalistically. I am sure the same energy is driving your work on the streets of Rio as we speak!

It is good to see this work as a formal essay here on Burn.

Favorites include…9, 13, and 26. Excellent work! Safe travels.

Cheers, Jeremy

“They would play on into the night and into blue mornings, growing louder the notes burning through and off everyone and forgotten in the body because they were swallowed by the next one after and Bolden and Lewis and Cornish and Mumford sending them forward and forth till, as Bolden could see them, their bursts of air were animals fighting in the room…”–Michael Ondaatje, ‘Coming Through Slaughter’

How does one begin to describe the meaty soul and mossy, fecund spirit that is New Orleans? A city fermented by the dance of death and song of ghoulish sounds, a city so ripe in it’s ghosts and living steps that it is impossible to not spend some time there without clicking your heals and waddling up into a corner to have a chat with a long-departed pirate or gator steamer, all that before the jambalaya and the sweet bread shots come saddled with the bourbon….that city is more than the blues and jazz, it is gospel, and it’s ragin’, blessed and heart-broke, wide-grinned and open armed….just as a walk behind a funeral procession or a dart between shotgun porches amid the clattering rain….

Does one, can one, begin to understand or partake of that city amid the jubilation, exhultation and frenzy that is Mardi Gras, that remarkable Cajun-Voodoo, Jazz-Bustin’, Heart-sticking, particular type of celebration that, for me, has few peers. If Rio is about fucking, if Salvador is about costumes, if Olinda is about Samba, if Trinidad is about the hips and the lips, then New Orleans is about the heart, the sloppy yellin’, tear-drained cryin’, mad-brilliant love-burst heart…..and the heart of NO is the soul, the ache right there between your ribs, from all that has been lost straight up through the larynx and skull for all that is hoped for….

not a melancholy city, but a city born upon the feet-stompin’, heart-blurting sadness of praising in joy…..

for mardi gras ain’t at all about the feathery bustin’, coin-clickin’, swagger about Mardi Gras, but rather Mardi Gras is of, because New Orleans stomps and breathes and breaks your and its heart every moment of it’s loamy, effusive life…..

What i do love about your Essay Chris is that there, between all the brilliant lighting and gorgeous color (more about that in a bit), between all the ‘expected’ pictures of gorgeous outfits and mad-bird dancers, is that melancholy that does ache each nawliner…not the ache of Katrina and the flight (that is much too recent in her long, heart-break story), but the ache of what you’ve spoken of: building, nearly impossibly, land from the swamp, life from the dead, a city build upon the tombs and tons and bones of her history and inhabitants….slavery, cypress, burning water, rattled and skrimshawed bones…

there are pictures here that, for me, capture the complexity of NO, it’s brilliance for faith and creativity, its unquenchable desire to rise, higher than the levees, but also it’s recognition of the ghosts….picture #2 is THE first pivotal photograph and this shows me that YOU GET THAT city, that you not only lived it, but sucked upon more than crawdaddies and bourbon, but understood that there ain’t nowhere in that city that doesn’t dance to the tune of the dead, that doesn’t still believe that it ain rundown but that it’s a vermillion clicked place…Picture 2 gives it wide and beautiful…the church, the angle, the silhouette, the enormous godfigure dancer/demon….THAT is part of the spirit of Mardi Gras….I loved that you included a funeral march….for me, THAT IS THE HEART OF MARDI GRAS/N.O….because one must watch/see/LISTEN to a NO funeral march to get exactly what is so special about N.O….and of course the magnificent closing image, which along with #2, are my FAVORITE photographs….because for this subject, they ARE N.O…..lyrical, amibiguous, shadow-tongued, beauty….

it goes without saying that, as always Chris, your use of color is powerful and for me visceral. As I wrote under your essay after David’s workshop, you understand light and color as physical manifestations of emotion, of expression, physicality as metaphor. Yes, there are some technical ‘exciting’ photographs serviced by the classic Bickford technique (all the great pics: 8 (love that she is hold the torch of the sun, like the NO Stature of liberty), 10, 11, 12 (which i called the David Alan Harvey sequence, as they reflect very much David’s use of flash and light and all 3 seem like allusions to David’s work, as you have been a remarkable student for him!), 13 & 17 (classic bicford and beautiful use of shadow, once again your great use of Chiaroscuro), 22, 24, etc)…..it goes without saying that, to me, THIS ESSAY LOOKS LIKE BICKFORD!….just as with your beautiful project on CUBA, your sensibility for light and the emotion of light is both painterly and poetic…for me, light must, as should color, evoke something more than just ‘wow’, it must for me suggest physical meaning, the ‘shape and space’ of color…and your work here does that…and that is what i celebrate….

And I do hope that readers spend some time with your prose Chris. As i have said before, you may be the only other photographer who writes as a long an essay statement as yours truly, and for me, this is an example of writing and photography integrated….as always, beautifully, intelligently and lyrically written…..a powerful combination…

i would say that, to some degree, i share some reservation as Herve…i want MORE than just the dancing…although it is mardi gras ;)))…i want more like #2 and #26…more aftermath, more quiet…more food…more of those silent moments that lead prior and culminate on wednesday….

what it means to meditate upon loss and from that loss comes the belief…the belief in the living…

thank you chris, for again, giving us your special vision

hugs
bob

Maybe it’s because that even in New-Orleans, what was a ritual has become a colorful copy of itself, and good all-around fun replaces the true intensity of a celebration, so that what was for the ages has now become a (yearly) recurrence. No fault of your own.

This said,Fiestas/festivals are a tough subject for photographers, since the colors, excitment and festive crowds can allow for generic, if skilled, shots. One can’t never quite lose, but as well have one’s intuitive juices co-opted by the energy deployed around us.