The magazine of the art-form of the photo-essay “A free, really high quality photo-essay magazine.  Fabulous!” Stephen Fry. British actor, writer and film & documentary maker

September 2013 issue

by Max Aguilera-Hellweg

I used to live in New Orleans, and went to medical school there for 4 years.  Maybe there are other places like it for other people, but for many, like myself, who have lived in New Orleans and departed, you always stay connected, and go back there frequently, and it is always like you never left.  New Orleans becomes part of you.  This year, my wife and I took our two young kids back to New Orleans, so they could experience Mardi Gras.  I experienced Mardi Gras every year I lived there, but I don't think I saw Mardi Gras this way before, or maybe I forgot.  What struck me this Mardi Gras, what was so clearly visible, was this dark, very dark, nature to the krewes, the organized, usually exclusive, anonymous, and secret societies (clubs) that put on a parade.  When I lived here, it was the first few years of my wife and I being together, we weren't married yet, we were dating, and I think I was too caught up in being valiant, and heroic, and trying to get as many beads as I could catch, so as to impress her, such that I was oblivious, and just didn't see it.  This year, (maybe because I had my kids there, I had to protect them from the crowds from being stomped or getting lost or disappearing) I allowed myself to imagine, how my young kids were seeing it, how they were experiencing Mardi Gras. Mardi Gras happens in February or anytime up to the first week of March.  It's still cold and grey in Connecticut, where we live, in the months of February and March, and the day we arrived in New Orleans this year, it was warm, as it usually is, and even starting to get humid.  We arrived in the afternoon, and went to our first parade that night on Magazine Street. Warm, sweaty and crowded, the bars were open.  The whole city; the homes in every neighborhood were having a party.  Coming from cold, puritan New England, you can't help but feel and see the hedonist vibe.  My kids are usually asleep by the time the first krewe and Mardi Gras float made its way down Magazine St.  I could only imagine for my kids, like this was some wild dream, like Mr. Toads Wild Ride, a very dark attraction at Disneyland where all kinds of mayhem takes place, and that's when I saw it.  The white knights on the floats, wearing masks, and hats, they looked like KKK, the Ku Klux Klan. "Yeah," my friend said who still lives in New Orleans, "you never saw this before?"  Indeed, I wasn't just seeing things, there was a history. Mardi Gras came to New Orleans by way of Mobile, by way of France and is about as old (1718) as the City of New Orleans itself, but was nothing much like it is today.  In 1857 the first krewe formed, the Mystic Krewe of Comus, and they were the first to put a float on the street and parade.  After the Civil War, Mardi Gras was taken over by former Confederates, and Comus and other krewes took up codes of secrecy, racial bigotry, even the symbols and almost signature costume of the Ku Klux Klan.  For a while, the Klan made a dent in the history of Mardi Gras.  Because of violent activities associated with the Ku Klux Klan, Louisiana has a state law prohibiting the wearing of hoods and masks in public. Mardi Gras is one of the few occasions when exceptions are allowed.  I'm not saying the people in these photographs are members of the Ku Klux Klan, but the vibe is there.