N'awlins April 2005

New Orleans has a long standing reputation for it's mysterious religions, cults and outre personalities. Many many MANY books about the living dead are set in New Orleans and for good reason. It's history is packed with bizarre tales, rituals, and people---the dead among the most famous.

I have been to NoLa quite a few times and have yet to scratch the surface of its amazing cemeteries. Easy Rider made this particular cemetery very famous as well as the local permanent resident Marie Laveau.

Similar to Paris, NoLa cemeteries are used like parks and often contain benches and tables where families visit and picnic. Visitors leave everything from bottles of wine to beads, shells and coins for the dead. Flowers wilt too fast and visitors know that the Spirits here would prefer a drink or beads anyway!

Vandalism and graffiti is tolerated and the decay of the long lost tombs among the new expensive crypts just adds to the atmosphere and is an obvious metaphor of the city.

Of course Katrina made fascination with the local dead a bit---inappropriate. However I had the pleasure of being in NoLa a few months before the disaster which is when I took these shots. I returned there a year later but was so saddened by what I saw I didn't take a single picture. It just didn't seem right after what happened. Long live the spirit and Spirits of New Orleans...

(Grave robbers often crack open the tops of the crypts seeking lord-only-knows-what, therefore you can see into some of the crypts. Thankfully it's usually just rubble or small tokens left by visitors that you can see inside. However even life creeps in some of the spaces.)