Mardi Gras, New Orleans 2020
Last week my wife and I made the move down to New Orleans, Louisiana. Being a wedding photographer, it’s going to take a little time to build up my client base in this new much larger city. So as I’m in this transition, I want to becoming more acquainted with the city and it’s people by photographing as much of it as possible. I made it down a week before Fat Tuesday aka Mardi Gras Day and I knew that would be a perfect opportunity to get out and shoot some of the festivities and create some cool photos.
This city is so different from what I’m used to, I grew up in Northeastern Pennsylvania and the traditions there are much different from what they are in New Orleans. This city is really full of life and color, it truly feels like a place where people strive to be happy compared to the northeast mentality to which I've grown accustomed. As with any city there are issues and problems, for instance this year during the many parades a couple people lost their lives in tragic float accidents. I don’t want to come off as i’m romanticizing a place I don’t know much about but I want to convey the beauty that I’ve experienced in my short time here.
My wife’s uncles let us know that we needed to check out the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club Parade. After seeing photos of the parade from previous years we definitely wanted to make sure we made it to that one. It’s kind of a shock to see people with their faces painted black. Coming from an area where people can be very critical of racist and derogatory traditions I was initially taken aback. But after learning about the history of this practice and in fact it isn’t a means of degrading black people but a type of masquerade as black people weren’t allowed to wear masks when this parade began over a 100 years ago. These people are depicted as royalty and you get a sense of awe when seeing someone dressed as they were. These costumes were some of my favorites from the entire day!
At the beginning of the Zulu parade, there were a lot of costumed marchers. They wore colorful feathers, grass skirts, and different designs on their outfits. It was a lot to take in and I’m glad I have these photos to actually sit and analyze how intricate all of these costumes were. After these marchers, the big floats began to come down the road. They were tall, filled with people wearing colorful costumes and small gifts of beads, balls, toys and coconuts were showering the crowd. My wife happened to land of one of their coveted coconuts!
After we walked a few miles chasing the parade and shooting photos, we decided to walk to the French Quarter and see what was going on. We’ve been to the French Quarter a bunch so we’re pretty familiar with most of it. We try avoid Bourbon Street as much as possible, due to the sheer amount of drunk people. We went straight for Royal Street and started to walk. Being that it was Mardi Gras the road was closed so everyone was walking down the street in their costumes.
At the corner of Royal and St. Peter we ended up running into the Society of Saint Anne Parade. It seemed to break apart and merge in different sections of the French Quarter. It was quite a sight. We just seemed to be engulfed into the parade, there was confetti flying, beads being thrown, people dancing, music playing, it truly felt like a scene from a movie. We sat on this corner and embraced what was happening.
One of my favorite buildings in the French Quarter.
After that convergence of parades passed us, we made our way over to Jackson Square to see what was going on. Normal days there are pretty interesting for photography so I wanted to see what Mardi Gras was like. Once we walked into the square we could see huge religious posters belonging to protesters. The head protester was drowned out by a guy with a much louder megaphone yelling Blah Blah Blah. No one wanted their presence there and it was well known. There were people dancing in front of them, yelling at them, the mega horn man was running his siren to drown out the protesters.
Fear mongering VS a man dressed up as a big butterfly
We decided to walk away from the square but we didn’t make it a half a block before another parade was heading our way. There was so much empty space between me and the front of the parade so I lined up a shot that might be my favorite on of the whole day.
This parade was headed right for the protesters so I decided to see how they would handle it. After approaching them, they stopped then decided to go right through them and just have a great time all around them.
At this point we were starting to get exhausted being that were out walking for about 7 hours. We started to make our way out but there was still more to capture so these last few photos are from our walk down Bourbon St. then out of the French Quarter.
Here’s to a successful day at my first Mardi Gras! If you’re ever in need of a New Orleans photographer feel free to send me an email! I’d love to work with some new people and companies in New Orleans!