Sandpoint artist captures heart of New Orleans

SANDPOINT - If walls could talk, New Orleans would give you an earful. Tales of late night jazz and midnight voodoo, intense celebration and abject misery would twist and intertwine until a picture began to form of a city that has always seemed to teeter precariously, but happily, on the extreme edge of life.

That might explain why New Orleans has more than its share of colorful characters, all of whom inhabit an architectural hodgepodge that is as varied and evocative as the people themselves.

Sandpoint photographer Marie-Dominique Verdier recently completed a series of artistic pilgrimages to the Crescent City to compile the images for her new book titled, “New Orleans Walls: Still Standing.”  She first became interested in what those walls had to say about 16 years ago, when a musician friend asked her to put her keen photographic eye to work to create an album cover.

Still living in New Orleans and shooting with film at the time, Verdier began a series of double exposure photographs that juxtaposed a few friends and relatives with the texture and imagery found secreted in the sides of old buildings and houses. Her family’s move to Sandpoint in 2000 put the project on hold. Hurricane Katrina brought it back to life.

Verdier began looking for a way to help the city she once called home and found it in an organization called the St. Bernard Project, which works to provide housing for Katrina survivors who want to return to neighborhoods once devastated and now coming back to life, like flowers springing up where only muck and mud once stood.

“I think anybody who has lived in New Orleans was completely moved by Katrina,” the photographer said. “It was hard to go back - the people were so affected by what happened there. Years later, they still talk about it like it was yesterday.”

While Katrina acted as a catalyst for the project, it was not the focus of the book. That honor is claimed by some of New Orleans’ most famous residents, who share the frame in double exposures with some of its more visually suggestive backdrops.

The aging face of music great Fats Domino seems to bleed through the weathered paint of a cinderblock wall; New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees holds his infant son aloft as they blend into a brick-backed wash of green that speaks of new life; Big Easy bandleader Rockin’ Jake becomes one with a painted wooden backdrop whose grain appears to at once animate him and pierce him to the heart.

Convincing celebrities to pose for shots turned out to be the easiest part of the process, according to Verdier, who explained that arranging to meet those well-known people and then travel to the appointed walls proved more difficult. Once there, however, she found that the photo subjects were entirely willing to step into her artistic vision.

“Some of them just had fun with it and others weren’t as expansive, but it seemed like all of them really understood what I was trying to do,” Verdier said. “It was all very positive and there were no attitudes. I think I just had the right people.”

Not that there weren’t moments when she pushed hard against the boundaries in order to capture the final image she had in mind. During a session with jazz legend Ellis Marsalis - father to equally famous musician sons Branford and Wynton - Verdier had to walk up and physically lift the man’s arms into position to reflect the mural behind him.

“I was nervous the whole time I was moving his arms around because I thought, any second now, he’s going to say, ‘What are you doing?!’” she recalled.

In some of the photographs, the walls come through as the star of the shot, with the human subjects acting as transitory visitors in a world that was there before they arrived and will remain long after they’re gone. In others, personalities leap from the page with open smiles or shrink away from the lens to merge with the peeling paint and trailing vines of the walls behind them. Many of these encounters sparked conversation between photographer and subject, the gist of which has been included in the new book in the form of brief, personal stories.

“They may be famous, but they’re still people - their lives and their stories are just like ours,” said Verdier, adding that the shared tales were an unexpected extension to the photo collection. “The stories add a lot. It’s the icing on the cake.”

By the time she returned to the project in 2008, Verdier had made the shift from film to digital photography. Although she was limited to shooting one frame at a time with the old technology and has the advantage of layering and manipulating digital images, the combination of famous faces and a pending deadline for completing what is now her third published book of photos turned up the heat, artistically.

“There’s a huge difference between the two - you can be much more free and creative with digital,” the photographer said. “But I was also less self-conscious in the beginning, when I was shooting with film, because I didn’t have any expectations.”

With the book complete and ready to launch, Verdier said she feels like she has given back to the city that gave so freely to her during her time there. As a bonus, she found that the work helped her break through her many of her own personal and artistic walls. It also gave her a renewed appreciation for the resilience of New Orleans and its people.

“To me, it’s about enjoying the ride,” she said. “Life is not about what happens to us, but how we deal with what happens to us.

“I think there’s something to learn from people who suffer and still know how to party,” she added. And New Orleans knows how to party.”

The Sandpoint book launch for “New Orleans Walls: Still Standing” will take place on Friday, April 8, from 4-7:30 p.m. at the First Light Gallerie, located next to the Panida Theatre on First Avenue. From there, Verdier will travel back to New Orleans on April 11-12 for a series of radio, television and press interviews to christen the book in its birthplace.

To view images from the photo collection and read the artist’s blog on the project, visit: www.neworleanswalls.com

Information: (208) 946-9308