The Young Mardi Gras Indian
A tradition older than the street signs, stitched one bead at a time.
The Mardi Gras Indians of New Orleans have masked for well over a century, sewing suits so elaborate that a single one can take an entire year and cost thousands of dollars in beads and feathers. It is folk art you wear exactly once, then take apart and begin again.
I met this young spy boy on a back street in the Seventh Ward at dawn, before the crowds, while his grandmother made last adjustments to his crown. The blue of the suit seemed to pull all the light out of the morning. He looked straight down my lens with an expression far older than his years.
“You don't photograph a Mardi Gras Indian. You're granted an audience, and you'd better be worthy of it.”
— Marc Pagani
As a photographer you are always negotiating trust, and never more so than here. These are private traditions performed in public, and the camera can either honour them or exploit them. I asked permission, I moved slowly, and I made exactly the frames I was offered — no more.
This is the New Orleans that doesn't make the postcards: not Bourbon Street, but the neighbourhoods where culture is handed down on a front stoop from one generation to the next. It's the reason I keep coming home.
Where It Was Shot
New Orleans, Louisiana, USA
29.9511° , -90.0715°
Shot on location in 2018. Follow the map to see exactly where this frame was made.
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