Clayton James Cubitt’s mom was a teenage runaway, go-go dancing at a club on Bourbon Street in New Orleans. His dad was a Canadian national running pot over the border from mexico. They met, married, and moved to Los Angeles, conceiving him on the trip in the back of a VW bus at Dinosaur National Park in Utah. Now he takes pictures and lives in Brooklyn. He grew up in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, where his family still lives. He is also known as Siege and he has put together the most striking and original web site you’ll ever view.
Arresting, powerful photographs and writing that will grab you where it hurts work together to bring you the tragic story of Katrina and New Orleans.
An excerpt:
This was where Storyville stood. Where Louis Armstrong was born, and sang the Basin Street Blues. Where jazz was dreamed up. Where E.J. Bellocq photographed the prostitutes. It was the underbelly, the joy, the passion, the fear, the anger, the sex, the death. The wild sweaty life. They tore it down and built a big prison, what you see here. The Iberville Housing Projects. Now empty and quiet, its residents storm-tossed first to the Superdome, then the Astrodome, who knows where now. All’s quiet and dead on Basin Street tonight, and it’s lonely.
Click the headline and be prepared to spend some time.
