LOUISIANA FACES: Images From a Renaissance
Photographs by Philip Gould, text by Jason Berry
Louisiana State University Press, 152 pages, $39.95
More than 25 million tourists poured into Louisiana last year, presumably drawn by the promise of Mardi Gras merriment, Cajun cuisine, scenic bayous and what New Orleans writer Jason Berry characterizes as the quirky charms of an eccentric people. Untouted in the travel folders are the Pelican State’s less laudable distinctions, among them its lengthy history of political scandals and high rates of illiteracy, poverty and environmental pollution.
“In Louisiana, culture and corruption sometimes seem to function cheek to jowl, rubbing against each other like dancers at a ball, partners in a forced marriage, nevertheless putting on a respectable waltz,” Berry writes in “Louisiana Faces,” a richly illustrated overview of the often schizophrenic forces that have shaped one of America’s most idiosyncratic regional cultures. “Each side of Louisiana’s divided personality wants so much more.”
But between that divide, Berry argues, lies a wellspring of creative expression that has given rise to an artistic, intellectual and culinary renaissance felt far beyond Louisiana’s borders. In recent decades, increasing numbers of Louisiana musicians, artists, writers and chefs have left their marks on mainstream culture, from zydeco pioneer Clifton Chenier and best-selling author Anne Rice to chef Paul Prudhomme of blackened redfish fame. “Louisianna Faces” documents that renaissance in words and pictures, pairing Berry’s anecdotal text and historical perspective with 135 colorful portraits by Philip Gould, a documentary photographer based in Lafayette, La.
Unabashedly boosterish and wryly amused by turns in its tone, this exuberant collaboration celebrates a cultural flowering still very much in progress. A few of the book’s featured players are obvious and widely recogizable choices: Rice poses in a New Orleans cemetery in a nod to her continuing fascination with the undead; rock ‘n’ roll veteran Fats Domino is photographed at home, standing in front of a white couch that sports arm rests fashioned from the tail fins of a vintage pink Cadillac. Clarinetist Pete Fountain, wearing an elaborate Chinese costume, is pictured leading his band during a Mardi Gras Day parade; Aaron Neville, of rhythm and blues band the Neville Brothers, belts out a song during the group’s performance at a New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival.
Some Louisiana residents pictured and chronicled have forged only modest regional reputations as authors, musicians and folk artists at this writing; still others have no particular claim to fame but nevertheless reflect or embody aspects of Louisiana’s cultural heritage for better or worse. Gould’s camera captures a voodoo priestess lighting the candles before beginning a ceremony; a parade of white-toqued residents of Abbeville carrying bushel baskets of eggs through the streets during the town’s Giant Omelet Festival; and participants in Baton Rouge’s 1992 Spanish Town Mardi Gras parade, known for its political irreverence, sporting likenesses of backsliding TV evangelist Jimmy Swaggart and scandal-plagued politicians David Duke and Edwin Edwards.
In one of the book’s most eerie and evocative images, a Louisiana rice farmer in trailing carnival garb rides a cream-colored horse through the woods during courir du Mardi Gras, or Mardi Gras run, a traditional Cajun celebration in which masked men on horseback gallop through the countryside in search of chickens destined for community stewpots.
“A good many of those who appear in these pages are not artists or musicians,” Berry writes, “but everyday people whose moments in the lens convey nuances of a social fabric, rhythms of daily life that rise to their own level of art and inspire others with quotidian joys, a precious sense of time and rootedness.”
Though Louisiana was settled amid a mix of ethnic traditions, and the Old World ambience of New Orleans’ French Quarter long has attracted writers and artists, Berry traces the taproots of the current artistic revival to the civil rights movements of the 1960s:
“The black freedom quest that dismantled legal segregation also opened avenues of communication among people who had lived in close proximity for generations yet were barred by fear from mutual understanding. The continuing dialogue is often too slow, saddled with frustration and recriminations on both sides; but the changes have had a profound, beneficial impact on the society.”
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, according to Berry, the rise of institutions such as the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival and the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts and New Orleans blues clubs such as Tipitina’s-which took its name from a song by New Orleans R&B great Professor Longhair-helped fuel a tide of creativity that continues to resonate.
“Political reporters will continue to swoop down, drawn to the state’s excessive power dramas, while those who report on culture and travel will pass through in search of more uplifting interpretations of Louisiana,” Berry writes. “Between this divide lies a territory of great expressiveness. An older, deeper memory keeps rising from these continental lowlands — a sense of myth and connection that even hard times cannot wash away — channeling the music, stories and images about native land into tidal currents that flow out, relentlessly, into the world.”
