Our New Artists Series/Meet Frank Relle/New Orleans Photographer

FRANK RELLE(please click on name)
NEW ORLEANS PHOTOGRAPHER

This new artists came to my attention via a friend of my brothers who collects Frank Relle's work.  Bill knew I had recently been to New Orleans and shared his interest in this wonderful artist.  
Relles' photographs are rich and mysterious, especially those of the houses and architecture of New Orleans.  Some of the most captivating are post Katrina.  His work and back ground are  so interesting I thought you might enjoy him as well. 

Nightscapes by Frank  Relle from google image

Choctow by Frank Relle New Orleans photographer/post Katrina

His images are powerful and the lighting makes them dramatic.  They make you feel as if a Tennessee Williams play could be happening here and some one will step out and yell, "Stella!!!" The characters are present, you can feel them or sense them....that is the essence of New Orleans you can feel a lot you can see, you can feel the presence of the history of things as though it is a living breathing thing.  Relle captures that.  The clarity of the photograph, the detail in each piece, lit as well as another...every object is given equal attention and that makes it quite masterful because it draws us in and we want to know more and we want to know the story...

If you had seen New Orleans right after Katrina and the sheer mass of destruction it would have been overwhelming to you, as it was to me.  I felt as if I was walking through the streets of Hiroshima or Nagasaki, not the Big Easy.  It was impossible to tell the whole story on tv, and if you thought you got a sense of it looking at a newspaper or the news, you were wrong.....only by being here could you get the feeling of neighborhood after neighbor hood, street after street, for miles and miles, complete and utter ruin...sights sounds, smells, and the desolate ghost like streets, tic tack toe graffiti on house fronts saying who lived or died.  My partners Father spent a month with us, his home flooded.  The rest of her family was displaced to Texas and Conneticut. Lives were lost, lives were changed, and a city altered forever.  It was one of the worst natural disasters in the United States since the San Fransciso 1800's Eathquakes.  Someone had to record it in a way that would grasp its enormity and inconsolable loss, Frank Relle has done that.  It is not the totality of his work by any means, but that he did is important, very important. His pictures capture, what we cannot say in words.

Clouet by Frank Relle/New Orleans photographer....from google image 

A special thanks to Dr. Bill Lavely for introducing Frank Relle's photography to me and therefore to you.

Bob Dylan and New Orleans

There are so many writers, musicians and artists that experience New Orleans .....it leaves a mark like a first time lover, it becomes indelible with the soul.  One could become intimidated in the pure steep of creativity that is expressed about one magical place.  I ran across these quotes by Bob Dylan and thought you might enjoy the wonderful descriptions.  I have paired the quotes with some photo's I took yesterday in the French Quarter and other areas.  If you can not travel here physically I hope this allows you to do so virtually.  


"The ghosts race towards the light, you can almost hear the heavy breathing spirits, all determined to get somewhere. New Orleans, unlike a lot of those places you go back to and that don't have the magic anymore, still has got it. Night can swallow you up, yet none of it touches you. Around any corner, there's a promise of something daring and ideal and things are just getting going. There's something obscenely joyful behind every door, either that or somebody crying with their head in their hands. A lazy rhythm looms in the dreamy air and the atmosphere pulsates with bygone duels, past-life romance, comrades requesting comrades to aid them in some way. You can't see it, but you know it's here. Somebody is always sinking. Everyone seems to be from some very old Southern families. Either that or a foreigner. I like the way it is.

There are a lot of places I like, but I like New Orleans better. There's a thousand different angles at any moment. At any time you could run into a ritual honoring some vaguely known queen. Bluebloods, titled persons like crazy drunks, lean weakly against the walls and drag themselves through the gutter. Even they seem to have insights you might want to listen to. No action seems inappropriate here. The city is one very long poem. Gardens full of pansies, pink petunias, opiates. Flower-bedecked shrines, white myrtles, bougainvillea and purple oleander stimulate your senses, make you feel cool and clear inside. "
Bob Dylan

Antique Reflection's in the Quarter/Elizabeth Gordon

New Orleans style bungalow /Elizabeth Gordon

Sinking in the Quarter/ Elizabeth Gordon