Impossible City: New Orleans - Text by Tim Culvahouse. Photos by Virginia Hanusik.


First Street, Central City, New Orleans
"I don’t suppose any city in North America has been parsed so thoroughly in the last dozen years as has New Orleans. Before the failed levees drowned it in brackish water and press coverage and architectural competitions, the city was largely a mystery to anyone who hadn’t been there, and to most people who had. Now we are inundated with studies and proposals, paeans and diatribes, portraits and dramatizations, Treme and NCIS. We might even imagine we have the full picture of New Orleans. But of course that’s not true. The New Orleans of popular imagination is loud and colorful, often crowded, in your face. Certainly Bourbon Street is, so Virginia Hanusik’s picture at sunrise is a minor revelation. The last bars have closed, at four or five, and all that’s left is the sour smell of oysters, vomit, and stale beer. Every so often, in the cool drift from an open door, there comes a sweet trace of dark liquors, breathed out from shadowed wood. ..."
Places

2012 September: Jazz Parades: Feet Don't Fail Me Now, 2017 December: Astoria Hotel, 2017 December: The 'Eternality' of Graffiti, 2018 February: Nine Albums to Get You Ready for Mardi Gras in New Orleans, 2018 March: Carnival of the Grotesque: Kara Walker’s Insistent Resistance in New Orleans

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