Reflections of the Quarter                photo by elizabeth gordon

When I took this photo I did not notice the wooden boat with posed people until later.  I was so busy walking and snapping photo's so my attention was a bit distracted.  However, later when I looked at my shots and noticed this photo with the other images it all became clear.  The imagery and symbology resonated within me later.  The people in the boat standing with heads bowed in morning or resignation to their fate in this ghostly pale blueish white seems to stand for the historic flooding of New Orleans when the relentless storm broke down the levees and this huge immense city of hundreds of thousands flooded.  Lives were lost, bodies floated bumping up to the interstate bridges, spay painted symbols on housing speaking in codes of how many resided and how many died....a city lost, a way of life lost, memories and entire childhoods washed away....the ghostly boat drifts away with the lost souls into the mist of the bayou, the fog closes in and they are gone drifting on, drifting on. The metal water cover on the bottom right calls our to the problem, water...too much water, the sewers flooded, water bubbled up from underneath, Earth was not longer firm, the ground upon which one stood.  The crime warning tape wrapped like a decoration and a stop light all say stop, caution, the shame of a crime by levees not maintained that broke...corruption that finally gave way and betrayed, but in the background are the ever present wroth iron balconies and lush flora bursting forth...a promise of renewal.  Art and galleries, new commerce is hope, hope for the city that doesn't die.  


REFLECTIONS  NIGHT THE LEVEES BROKE


A MISTED NIGHT 
FOG ENGULFS ALL IN ITS WHITE CLOAK
THE BAYOU CLAIMS THEM BACK 
THE WATERS FLOODED 
 OVER THE BANKS INTO THE CITY
ETCHING, ERODING, ERASING 
GATHERING SOULS IN SHROUDED HANDS
CRIES FOR HELP, PLEAS FOR RESCUE UNHEEDED
FROM ROOF TOP A THOUSAND CALLS ECHO ACROSS
CANALS, STREETS, AND NEIGHBORHOODS,
SOME WERE HEARD, MANY NOT
AS SHE GATHERED HER CHILDREN SHE MARKED X'S ON DOORWAYS WITH LONG BLUISH WHITE BONEY FINGERS, NOTING HER BOUNTY FOR ALL TO REMEMBER
THEIR SPIRITS STAND IN THE BOAT AND DRIFT, SLOWLY, SURELY INTO HER REALM...MOTHER DEATH, QUEEN OF GRIEF AND SORROW
AS SHE TURNED LOOKING BACK OVER HER SHOULDER, SHE SAW A LIGHT, A SMALL LIGHT THAT SEEMED TO GROW BRIGHTER AND BRIGHTER
SHE HAD NOT CONQUERED ALL, 
HOPE LIVED IN THE HEARTS OF THOSE
SHE COULD NOT CLAIM
SHE DRIFTED ON INTO THE BAYOU WITH THE REALIZATION
HER POWERS WERE NOT ENOUGH TO OVERCOME LOVE


BY ELIZABETH GORDON

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.

Outsider Art/New Orleans

Outsider Art

I mention New Orleans a good bit in my blog because I have friends and family that I go to see often there. I have seen New Orleans before and after Hurricane Katrina devastated a large portion of the city. Tv coverage could not convey the total expanse of the destruction, street after street, block after block and neighborhood after neighborhood. It looked as if an atomic bomb had gone off. I remember flying in to the city at night not long after Katrina wondering where all the lights were and then it dawned on me how much of the city was gone. People are tough inNew Orleans and it is a city that is far too unique to lose. Jazz and blues are back, the wonderful restaurants in the French Quarter have reopened and the city is coming back, but it has taken much longer than people thought. The struggles were tougher than anyone imagined. I admire New Orleans and the people. They love their city and their culture and they did not give up.

In my many visits to New Orleans through the years I have become enamored with the Outsider Art that I have seen on the streets, in galleries, cafes, and museums. The Hard Rock Cafe in New Orleans has a wonderful collection and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art also carries outsider artists. I love the combination of words with image, wood with metal, and the honest naive imagery. It gives all people access to art and expression who have not had art training. I love the pure honest approach to this art, it is expression at its most basic form....no pretense....it is what it is.

The Art of The Southern African American Garden of the Past

There has been a book published recently about the gardens about black families of the South and their gardens. I saw the reference briefly and will need to go back and look it up for you, but it reminded me of these photo's I took in New Orleans. This was a small garden outside a restaurant near the 9th ward that was so devastated by hurricane Katrina. I love the garden for its naiveness and honesty. As an artist I am enamored when people with no art background are creative in their everyday life. I am not sure if this was meant to be a version of a black saint as St. Fransis of Assi, or another religious figure. I love the contrast, the almost reverse image of face and hair, the bright colors that seem to call from the Islands. But I just love people wanting

to be creative. Naive art, outsider art, primitive art-what ever we may call it, is the human spirit wanting to create with what ever skills they have.

The African American Gardens of the past often had any objects that could be found easily in the immediate environment and then utilized into the garden whether it be an old paint bucket, a used black rubber tire, or a piece of this or that. These were families who had little and made something from the little they had. However I think the influence from African and the Islands many of these people originated from. As a child of the South I remember these gardens well, but had not thought about their influence and uniqueness until I happened upon the reference to this book. I look forward to tracking it down and sharing it with you.