Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Spring 2006 - (Page 51) the Beat of the I was born in Philadelphia and raised in New York, but have been growing up in New Orleans. I moved to the city in the summer of 1993 on a romantic mission to be a fine art photographer. My heroes at the time were Robert Frank, Garry Winogrand, Diane Arbus and Lee Friedlander — “street photographers” whose uncropped pictures of the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s were visual poems of an unknown secret America. At first my life revolved around the French Quarter, but I lived on the other side of Rampart Street in a neighborhood called the Faubourg Tremé. Southern summers are hot and slow, and that may explain why it took me months to discover that my neighborhood was the downtown epicenter of New Orleans’ musical community. I’ll never forget the day I awoke to the sound of trumpets and witnessed my first second line. I grabbed my camera and joined in the parade. I did not intend to document anything of particular historical importance or to do the fieldwork of a cultural anthropologist, but through my photography, I came to understand that I was in the midst of something unique and powerfully essential. I ritually attended Mardi Gras Indian gatherings, second-line parades and jazz funerals and I was invited to participate in the complex social networks and events that sustain this amazing interdependent community. Having fallen deeply in love with these traditions, and to the extent I was privileged and able, I immersed myself in New Orleans’ special way of life. Every Sunday during second-line season, I could count on greeting people I knew on the street. Sometimes, I would see hundreds of familiar faces. We may not have remembered each other’s names, but we would always treat each other like family because in this sense we were: This is what we loved, and this is what it meant for us to be free. Street Photographer L.J. GOLDSTEIN keeps his lens on the second lines, Mardi Gras Indians and jazz funerals of New Orleans No matter where I go, for as long as I breathe, I will be always grateful to the bearers and guardians of this majestic culture. It is the heart and soul of New Orleans. —L.J. Goldstein (www.brothergoldstein.com) Spring 2006/LOUISIANA CULTURAL VISTAS 51 http://www.brothergoldstein.com
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