Last week was a hard one for New Orleans, with a shooting at a Mothers Day second-line parade injuring 20 people. I was at the parade with many of my closest friends and we know several of the club members who were parading — all of us were just mere steps away from the gunfire. I worked on a followup story for the New York Times which helped to keep me grounded and busy while still processing the experience. Along with images from a community rally against violence that occurred the day after the shooting, my editor included two older pictures I made at the Mothers Day parade in 2011 to provide some visual context for the story. It made for a great layout in the National Section of the paper, and you can read the excellent story online: “Celebrating, in Spite of the Risk“.

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This week has been much quieter — I went camping on the beach in Florida. I’m wandering shaded streets around town shooting a (sweaty) travel assignment, and sorting through old stories and revisiting some of the things I absolutely love about this city… like MARDI GRAS MARCHING BANDS.

This past Mardi Gras season, Katy Reckdahl wrote a fantastic piece for the NYT on the trials and triumphs of The McDonogh 25 High School marching band (the “Roneagles“). I had an awesome time tagging along with the band one evening as they played in the annual Krewe of Hermes parade down St. Charles Street. The experience reinforced my love for New Orleans as one of the many ways this city really comes together.

In April, I got a call from a creative director based in Atlanta who is re-working the design and branding of byFaith, the magazine of the Presbyterian Church in America. He had a story assignment in New Orleans about a local church in the St. Roch District. Home to a young, diverse, and dynamic congregation, the St. Roch Community Church reflects the greater neighborhood, which has undergone big changes since Hurricane Katrina forced many of its residents to leave. Current members of the church have entered its doors through some pretty amazing circumstances, and the four characters for this story each have their own tales.

‘Gumbo Gospel’ (text-only) is hosted on the byFaith website, and I included a larger edit and the print layout here. I rarely get to shoot in black and white on assignment or work on something so close to home, and had a lot of fun meeting such a friendly and welcoming group of people.

The Blessing of the Fleet is celebrated in several Catholic fishing communities in Southern Louisiana each year to mark the beginning of the shrimping season.  Chauvin, Louisiana’s annual ‘boat blessing’ ceremony is a true modern processional on the water, in which one or more priests float down the bayou and pray for each of the community’s shrimping vessels as they pass by. The blessed boats then fall into place at the end of a growing parade line, and the entire community heads out to Lake Boudreaux for an afternoon on the water.

A tradition that began centuries ago in Mediterranean fishing communities, the Blessing of the Fleet has been reinterpreted and redefined around the world and varies widely according to local tradition. Celebrations range from simple rituals to elaborate festivals lasting several days. While the actual blessing is meant to ensure a safe and bountiful season of work, in communities like Chauvin this rite is now performed amidst parties, contests, and revelry that bring the entire town together to celebrate. Each trawler is painstakingly decorated with streamers and signs and the boat deemed the prettiest wins the honor of hosting the priests and leading the next year’s procession.

In recent years, the Gulf Coast shrimping industry has been threatened by rising fuel prices and environmental change. Pollution from oil spills and the continued destruction of fragile coastal ecosystems have devastated the tenuous balance on which Chauvin’s economy depends, but the camaraderie and communal history of this Louisiana fishing community prevails in their annual boat blessing celebration.

NPR has been telling this larger story through the experience of the Chauvin family, fifth generation shrimpers and advocates for their community and livelihood. You can find several installments of The Disappearing Coast series as well the audio piece which my work accompanies here: After Oil Spill, Shrimpers Hope For Blessed Season.

It was great to work with NPR on this story and I think they’re doing a fantastic job of personalizing the current situation along the Gulf Coast. Spending even a little time in shrimping country is enough to know that an amazingly unique and rich cultural heritage is at stake, and that it’s completely entwined with the changing economy of shrimping and fishing in the Gulf Coast… like a trawl net.