Mardi Gras Indian Practice!!!!

Last week, while in New Orleans with the Recession-Where Y'at student group from UT, I made the connection I thought would take me at least 5 years to make within the Mardi Gras Indian community of New Orleans!

While at the Original Four Social Aid and Pleasure Club's Annual Secondline, with music from the Hot 8 Brass Band....

...(which was way fun, per usual) an extremely photogenic lady I have shot many times throughout the years at these parades entered my lens.

Yaa, as she likes to be known, told me that she recognized me and wants to see some photos I've taken of her. I of course gave her my card and then our conversation was distracted by something so, I went on shooting and she went on dancing. After a few minutes I felt a tug on my shirt. As I looked back to see who it was, Yaa let out her signiture "Yaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!" yell and smiled real big and pulled me down to her level. (Yaa is probably no taller than 4 feet 9 inches, in my estimation....but her personality is at least 7 feet tall!) She hollered in my ear that she is in a Social Aid and Pleasure Club, but her parade had just rolled last weekend. Then she said the magical words I've always wanted to hear. "Reno, baby, I want you to take my S & P Club's picture all the time. Maybe you can come to next year's parade?" Ummm, "No problem! Of Course! I love that," all came out of my mouth in one breath. And then, just when I thought it couldn't get any better she adds in, "AND I'm a Mardi Gras Indian and we got practice tonight. You wanna come?" WHAT? Is this real? Do I wanna come?! Not only do I wanna come"\, I think to myself, "but I also want to switch Master's Projects and move here now!!! Dang.

Here's a small (very small) sneak peak of what's to come. (Truth be told, shooting Mardi Indian Practice that night was one of the most difficult things I've ever tried to shoot. There is basically no light at all in the small bar where The Wild Magnolias hold practice every Sunday night. Its also jam-packed with people and includes some very fast movements. I've got to figure out how I'm going to over come the lack of light situation so, if any of you photogs out there have a suggestion that does not involve flash, Id love to hear it!):

Stay tuned on this one for sure...........

(Also, for more information on what exactly a Mardi Gras Indian is - check back in a couple of days. I'm gonna throw together a little something to help explain it all, but in the meantime, just know that it's completely RADICAL to the MAXXXXXXX!)

The City the Recession Forgot - Part Deux

After three weeks of preparations and three magical days on the ground, the student trip to New Orleans to cover how the national recession is effecting the city is half done. We got to NoLa on Oct 22 and reported through part of the 25th.

We have all made it safely back to Austin and are collectively scrambling to catch up on all our other classes. This coming Saturday (AKA Halloween!) we will all congregate for yet another time to finalize our projects and post everything to the web.

In the meantime, check out our blog to read our initial essays and see our teaser gallery:

http://recession-whereyat.blogspot.com/

Stay tuned for more on this project in the coming week....

Cooperative Coffees Annual Conference 2009 - Austin, TX

I had the pleasure of  hanging out with some 40 fair trade coffee roasters from around the US and Canada last weekend here in Austin, as Cooperative Coffees held their annual conference and celebrated their ten-year anniversary.


"Cooperative Coffees is a green coffee importing cooperative, comprised of 23 community based coffee roasters in the USA and Canada, committed to building  and supporting equitable and sustainable trade relationships for the benefit of farmers and their exporting cooperatives, families and communities. We strive to promote transparent Fair Trade and sustainable development alternatives in both the North and the South, while continuing to sell the highest quality coffee on the market. "
---Taken from http://www.coopcoffees.com/


I got to photograph the general meetings, the after party, the kayaking trip (Yikes! I went out on that lake/river in a kayak with an ridiculous amount of money in camera gear - none of which was mine), as well as the cuppings.


By far, my favorite stuff is actually from the cuppings, not the kayaking trip as one might expect. What makes these images really cool are the sounds of slurping and spitting that go along with them. And, yes, I totally collected that audio and will produce a soundslides soon......Stay tuned!

"The City the Recession Forgot"

Eli Reed, Magnum photographer extraordinaire and Associate Professor at University of Texas at Austin's Photojournalism Department, is teaching the intro class for first year graduate students this semester as a production class about the economy here in Austin. He wants to expand that class's scope and take them to New Orleans for a short three day trip in October to try and cover the story of the economic down turn in crescent city as well.

He has asked me to serve as resident NOLA Guru for the team that goes down and I have decided to chronicle my experience both logistical (trying to help guide a group of rowdy journalists) and intellectually (trying to develop my own understanding of the city I love, yet am confounded by). I will basically be doing a great deal of preliminary research and reporting ("fixing", if you will) for all participants before we go so that those folks can just hit the ground running.

I have asked Jen Reel, Christina Burke and Dawn Jones Garcia (All rad visual journalists) to help me head up an editorial team that will get all work produced posted online at least once while we are there and again when we return and finalize the projects. (This is all scheduled to happen at the end of October and I intend to post links to said webspace soon!) The editing team will also serve as structure gurus should anyone need any guidance and/or someone to bounce their ideas off of both before and after we get there. (This model is loosely based off of Tracy Dahlby's used during the China Maymester - See www.chinaonthemove.net for more of an idea of what we are going for.)

I have suggested that all participants and editors read Tom Piazza's Why New Orleans Matters. This is quick, but efficient read to help you all understand what it is that make New Orleans a unique American city. The first half is just a good general background book on the mindset, social/political climate, and cultural richness of this historically poor and corrupt city that bubbles over with life. The second half is the author, a journalist for the Times Picayune's (New Orleans local newspaper) explanation of what the Storm did to the city, how it was able to wreak such havoc, and what his concerns were for the future (He wrote the book just after the storm.) While what the participants of the project will be doing down there is directly covering the story of the economy and not the story of the flood or of the rebuilding, anything and everything they do in New Orleans will be, at least, indirectly tied to the events of August 29th, 2005 and the days followed. It will behoove them all to be familiar with how locals perceive those events as they move forward with their stories.

In addition, I have suggested that they all do as much reading up on the situation as possible. A really rad article on the recession in NOLA I found was this one, posted on the CityBusiness Blog:

http://neworleanscitybusiness.wordpress.com/2009/04/09/recession-proof-new-orleans/

*Some of the best points are actually made in the comments section of this piece. More to come on that later....

Black Men of Labor 2009