New Orleans

It was a sunny New Orleans afternoon when I wandered into St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 — the city of the dead.

I moved up and down its narrow streets with my camera, drawn to the architecture: the stacked white tombs, the graphic planes of stone and shadow, the light cutting in from different directions. I was thinking like a photographer.

Then something shifted.

I don’t know exactly when it happened, but I began to feel it - a presence, a nervousness I couldn’t explain. The streets were narrow. The heat pressed in. I started to sweat. The veil between the living and the dead, between the present and everything that had passed through this place, felt suddenly, unmistakably thin.

Every instinct told me to leave. And yet I stayed — long enough to make a series of photographs I have never forgotten.