The Understory

In City Park in New Orleans there is a grove of live oaks that has been growing for hundreds of years. People come from all over the city to sit under the trees, meet friends, rest, and play. It is a place apart from the rest of their lives, and they behave differently in it.

That is what I photograph. Under the oaks, people are away from home, work, and the neighborhoods that define them, and they seem freer to present themselves however they choose. In front of the camera they become, for a moment, who they would like to be.

The trees have characters of their own. Several are named for what has happened beneath them: the Dueling Oak, the Singing Oak, the Suicide Oak. Over the centuries the grove has become a place to fight, to sing, and to die — and, mostly, simply to be.