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Conversation: Louisiana
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LOCATION CONVERSATION: LOUISIANA Question: What does Louisiana give you? DHJ: At the risk of sounding over-dramatic, Louisiana is an antidote to suburban life, its manicured dullness. Question: Meaning what? DHJ: I mean I'm this relatively stiff white guy and it's not what I want to be, not all the time. I'd like to be more out-there, but I'm nailed down hard. I guess it's to do with being white, anglo-saxon, protestant all that burdensome nonsense. And it's unhealthy. Anyway, like many a white guy before me, I go to Mississippi, to Louisiana, to the Delta country, and I can relate to that music, it connects with me. Question: What do you want to be? DHJ: As a photographer, a visual person, it's good to be an exposed nerve, immediate, in tune with surroundings rather than expecting them to fit with you. If you understand the blues, you know what I'm talking about. The blues, it goes right in there, right into the guts and heart, and it doesn't matter who you are or where you are from. Question: So Louisiana has made a specific artistic contribution? DHJ: Just look at the names: Sidney Bechet, Louis Armstrong, Allen Toussaint, Fats Domino, Irma Thomas, the Marsalis family, Huddie Ledbetter, aka Leadbelly, Jerry Lee Lewis, Clifton Chenier, Dave Batholomew, Earl Palmer, Professor Longhair, Buckwheat Zydeco, the Neville brothers, Gregory Davis, it goes on and on. Question: I don't know all those names. DHJ: Well, you must have heard of Louis Armstrong and Fats Domino. If it started and ended there, it'd be enough. I could add another 100 names to the ones I've already given, and that's before we dive into literature. Question: So you find something in Louisiana, or maybe the south, that you don't find in the north? DHJ: Absolutely. I have driven down from the north in winter, through snow-covered Illinois and Indiana; you hit Louisville, Kentucky and already you feel a change, an improvement of climate. Then you keep going to Nashville and Memphis, Tennessee, cross into Mississippi and you're into a different landscape. Question: Yes, a landscape with an ugly and violent past. |
Top to bottom: Sidney Bechet; Wynton Marsalis; Music Festival, New Orleans, 1977; Rosie Ledet
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DHJ: That's true -- the American tragedy -- and it's not yet resolved. All that ugly stuff is still going on; it's on the surface and right under the surface. The south is a troubled place. But anyway, despite that or maybe because of it, there's a depth there and a lightness too. It's a place where you can mispell a few words, miss out a few commas and it doesn't matter. You get into that sticky heat, away from the snow and ice, escape from the straitjacket, and you have blues and soul. Question: What are the specifics of Louisiana you like? DHJ: The specifics are easy. The swamps, the Atchafalaya River, the moss-covered trees, the sticky heat, the Cajun riviera on the southern edge of Cameron parish, the food -- po' boys, gumbo, shrimp creole, jamabalaya, etoufee -- New Orleans, Rampart Street, Canal Street on a Friday night, Baton Rouge, the complete and entire black vibe; Holly Beach, the Mississippi Delta, Avery Island and Tabasco, voodoo, music, the amazing music -- blues, cajun, zydeco, jazz, gospel, funeral music, parade music, ragtime, the mix of all that -- Mardi Gras, the relaxed, or wild, feel of Mardi Gras: enjoy life, don't analyse it. I don't want to idealize this stuff or romanticize it because nowhere is perfect, but Louisiana is an anti-venom, an antidote to a lot of the mind-numbing garbage that afflicts us. Question: I thought that Mardi Gras was just a tacky tourist event, like Bourbon Street? DHJ: In New Orleans I guess it is, or can be, but there's still a heart and a core to Mardi Gras, even in New Orleans. It's the same with Bourbon Street: it has an international reputation, and you get there and it's intensely disappointing with strip joints, cheap beer, horrible Daquiri bars, and then you scratch the surface and between all that tacky stuff, and at the far end of the street, there are apartments, quieter places, good food and music, a local atmosphere and life. It's a mixture. And if you want a more family-oriented Mardi Gras, one without bare breasts and anything goes, you can go to Galveston, Texas or Mobile, Alabama. In those places you'll see and feel that Mardi Gras is deep-rooted. It's not just theme park stuff. Question: How does Louisiana fit into your work as a photographer? DHJ: It does and it doesn't. If I have the opportunity to go there, I have to find ways to make it connect with how I make a living, so I think in terms of themes, for example Hurrican Katrina, I did a lot of work documenting that, then there's destruction of the bayou, oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, the work to save endangered species; find out how shrimp fishermen are affected by climate change, how the Mississippi Delta is affected by climate change, or how the Atchafalaya is threatened by pollution, find out which research institutes are looking into those questions and then contact them. That's how I work. Question: And at the same time you enjoy being there? DHJ: Yes I do, but I enjoy being anywhere. Question: David, thank you for talking about Louisiana. DHJMy pleasure. |
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