Creole World
Photographs of New Orleans and the Latin Caribbean Sphere
New Orleans is often hailed for its distinctive Creole heritage—evident in its food, architecture, and people—but it is far from alone. Its Creoleness may be unique to the United States, but New Orleans is part of an entire family of Latin Caribbean cities with similar colonial histories. Founded as New World outposts of Old World empires, these cities forged new identities from their European, West African, and indigenous influences—by turns inspired by, in defiance of, and adapted from all of them.
Photographer Richard Sexton has been intrigued by this Creole world since he first traveled to Central and South America as a young man. For him, the architectural and urban similarities among Creole cities compose a visual theme supported by endless variations, grand and humble, old and new. The exhibition features fifty-nine photographs of Cuba, Ecuador, Argentina, Bolivia, and Haiti, as well as New Orleans, along with objects, photography equipment, and background material that relate to the photographer’s experiences while photographing.