We spent the 2018 holidays in New Orleans, staying at the Hotel Monteleone, with brunch at Brennan’s, oysters at the Desire, and dinners at Antoine’s, Galatoire’s and Commander’s Palace. But we found the most vivid memories in a gallery on Jackson Square, where Louis Sahuc’s romantic photographss were on display. A+A made a post out of them in January 2019, after our return:

Louis Sahuc’s been taking photographs of New Orleans for almost 50 years.

To be more precise, he’s been shooting pics since May 4, 1970, when he attended a rock concert in City Park, where an early iteration of the Allman Brothers were performing.

“I was impressed with all the cameras there,” he says. “My girlfriend said that maybe it’s a way to remember what you see, and I thought that was a good idea.”

So he bought a camera, and a legendary career took off.

He shoots in black and white, and sometimes color. His subject matter is almost exclusively his home town, where his family settled after moving from France in 1830. The French Quarter, in particular, is his favorite.

“I would like to share New Orleans with the world, because not everybody gets to come here,” he says. “In many ways it hasn’t changed much since I grew up, and in some ways it’s changed a lot – but it’s still one of the magical cities of the world.”

In the decades since the seventies, he’s shot hundreds of thousands of photos – if not a million.

Photography’s like music, he says – he likes all kinds. “I see everything and I want to photograph everything – I want the spontaneity and creativity,” he says. “I like the fact that I can go do a fashion shoot one day and then something industrial the next day and then the environment the next.”

But mostly, his work reflects a deep appreciation for one of America’s most intriguing and aesthetically provocative cities.

“It’s a kind of romantic journalism,” he says. “It’s like love letters from New Orleans.”

Who could resist those kind of missives?

For more, go here.

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