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photographing 19th century new orleans was a deeply rewarding experience

as in san francisco, i spent a great deal of my "vacation" wandering the streets of new orleans armed with a camera and multiple lenses. i deliberately avoided putting forth any objectives or parameters for myself in terms of producing architectural imagery that could be assigned greater meaning. i put little pressure on myself except to capture the "essence" of the buildings and their ornament built in the last half of the 19th century.

after finding myself in the epicenter of the french quarter, i quickly succumbed to the public intoxication and outright boobery running rampant on the streets. the next morning i had paid dearly for it, and could do little to stave off or control the horrific and prolonged pain and sense of malaise in every fidgeting cell. my body was hell-bent on exacting revenge from the night before. despite being crippled with a pounding headache and burning stomach, i managed to hit the streets with my camera waiting patiently for my "mind's eye" to gain momentum, and capture material that was engaging enough to lock me safely in the "zone," where i'm free from distraction and the only hazard is being run down by a car or a rampant cyclist.

like san francisco, there was an abundance of brightly painted decorative woodwork, in the form of bracketed cornices, window and door hoods or headers, door molding, and so on. "explosions" of heavily ornamented metalwork wrapped around balconies and galleries, protruding from the facades of largely bland multi-story buildings. this was overwhelming at first, but after a while i managed to start teasing out patterns in both configuration and style, based on the time period or type of structure it was applied to.

in addition, nearly every building contained both circular soffit vents and elongated oval cast iron foundation grates, presumably used to prevent the buildup of excessive moisture from the crawlspaces. in time, i hope to conduct further research on these vents and perhaps on the plentiful ironwork as a whole to determine the common fabricators and so on (i have a strong suspicion most of the ornamental cast iron came from alabama, where several foundries existed).

i will shy away from going into any great detail or establishing in-depth analysis of 19th century new orleans architecture. i'm already stuck in a perpetual state of falling behind on my research with chicago's architecture, where i'm intimately involved through the demolition process. as with my trip to see the painted ladies, i will provide these carefully selected images to represent what i gravitated to during this brief stint wandering the french quarter. the places that resonated would be the areas where grit and grime was wonderfully preserved, unaltered by the abrasive restorations that all too often destroy the delicate layer of time on a city.

 

 

 




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