Founded in the summer of 1972 by a few friends as a modest celebration, the Southern Decadence festival has since grown into one of New Orleans’s largest annual tourist events. The multiday extravaganza features street parties, drag contests, dancing, drinking, and bead tosses, culminating with a boisterous parade through the French Quarter. With over 200,000 participants―predominantly LGBT+―these unbridled, pre–Labor Day festivities now generate millions of dollars in revenue. Howard Philips Smith and Frank Perez’s Southern Decadence in New Orleans brings together an astounding array of materials to provide the first comprehensive, historical look at Southern Decadence. In an engaging account spanning five decades, the authors combine a trove of rare memorabilia from the event’s founders, early photographs and film stills, newspaper and magazine articles, interviews with longtime participants, a list of all the parades and grand marshals, as well as reproductions of early Southern Decadence invitations. Throughout, the authors explore the pivotal moments and public perceptions related to the festival―including the myths and conjecture that often inaccurately characterized it―and provide an in-depth narrative detailing how a small party in the Faubourg Tremé grew into a worldwide destination predominantly for gay men. Lauded by city leaders as the second-most profitable festival in New Orleans (outshone only by Mardi Gras), Southern Decadence emanates an air of frivolity that masks its enormous impact on the culture and economy of the Crescent City. But with such growth comes the challenge of maintaining the original spirit of camaraderie while managing expanding administrative and logistical responsibilities. Southern Decadence in New Orleans serves as a historical record that helps ensure the future of the celebration remains forever linked to the joyous impulse of its humble beginnings.

Southern Decadence in New Orleans

History

Smith, Howard Philips

Perez, Frank

Americas

LSU Press

Traditional Carnival has been well documented with a vast array of books published on the subject. However, few of them, if any, mention gay Carnival krewes or the role of gay Carnival within the larger context of the season. Howard Philips Smith corrects this oversight with a beautiful, vibrant, and exciting account of gay Carnival. Gay krewes were first formed in the late 1950s, growing out of costume parties held by members of the gay community. Their tableau balls were often held in clandestine locations to avoid harassment. Even by the new millennium, gay Carnival remained a hidden and almost lost history. Much of the history and the krewes themselves were devastated by the AIDS crisis. Whether facing police raids in the 1960s or AIDS in the 1980s, the Carnival krewes always came back each season. A culmination of two decades of research, Unveiling the Muse positions this incredible story within its proper place as an amazing and important facet of traditional Carnival. Based on years of detailed interviews, each of the major gay krewes is represented by an in-depth historical sketch, outlining the founders, moments of brilliance on stage, and a list of all the balls, themes, and royalty. Of critical importance to this history are the colorful ephemera associated with the gay tableau balls. Reproductions of never-before-published brilliantly designed invitations, large-scale commemorative posters, admit cards, and programs add dimension and life to this history. Sketches of elaborate stage sets and costumes as well as photographs of ball costumes and rare memorabilia further enhance descriptions of these tableau balls.

Unveiling the Muse: The Lost History of Gay Carnival in New Orleans

UNIVERSITY PRESS OF MISSISSIPPI

Jack Robinson made his name as a much-sought-after fashion and celebrity photographer during the 1960s and early 1970s, and his work is well documented in hundreds of pages of Vogue, the New York Times, and Life, as well as other publications. However, his personal life remains virtually unknown. In this study of Robinson and his photography, Howard Philips Smith takes an in-depth look at Robinson’s early life in New Orleans, where he discovered his passion for painting, photography, and the Dixie Bohemian life of the French Quarter. A Sojourn in Paradise: Jack Robinson in 1950s New Orleans features more than one hundred photographs taken by the artist, accompanied by detailed commentary about Robinson’s life in New Orleans and excerpts from interviews with the people who knew him when he lived there. Robinson’s photographs of New Orleans reveal the genesis of two unique and fascinating facets of the city’s history and culture: the creation of the first gay Carnival krewes who would make their own unique contribution to the rich cultural history of the city and the formation of the Orleans Gallery, one of the earliest centers of the contemporary art movement blossoming in 1950s America. This detailed study of Jack Robinson’s early life and photography illustrates the contributions of a gifted, gay artist whose quiet spirit and constant interior struggle found refuge in New Orleans, the city where he was able to find himself, for a time, free from society’s grip and open to exploring life on his own terms.\nBook Description\nWith 
A Sojourn in Paradise: Jack Robinson in 1950s New Orleans, Howard Philips Smith continues his exploration of gay life in that fabled city. Robinson’s moody photographs of prominent New Orleanians and his extensive recording of Carnival in that period are like treasures resurrected by Smith’s keen eye. He and curator Emily Oppenheimer have given us an invaluable collection of previously unseen New Orleans. (Henri Schindler, author of Mardi Gras New Orleans and the Mardi Gras Treasures series)\nIn 
A Sojourn in Paradise, Howard Philips Smith permits us to see how time, place, and Jack Robinson’s vision coalesced to make a compelling photographic statement of an era. With Smith’s insightful text and Robinson’s portraits and cityscapes, the New Orleans of the 1950s comes to light in a new way. With the French Quarter as a major backdrop, artists, designers, and influencers share the stage that is Robinson’s viewfinder. (John H. Lawrence, director of museum programs, The Historic New Orleans Collection)\nJack Robinson’s photographs of the New Orleans cultural scene in the postwar era, the subject of this significant new book by Howard Philips Smith, reflect Robinson’s notable talents as an artist and a photographer, as well as his unique position as an insider in both the city’s art world and its gay community. . . . Smith features many French Quarter characters in this book, noting that Robinson became part of a group of artists, writers, designers, musicians, preservationists, illustrators, restaurateurs, travel agents, and antiquarians. In addition to George Dunbar and Robert Helmer (founders of the Orleans Gallery), Smith refers to figures including Dusti Bongé, Jean Seidenberg, Katherine Choy, Lee Bailey, Leonard Parrish, Tilden Landry, Clay Shaw, Yvonne Fasnacht, Ella Brennan, Jack Beech, Bruce Butterworth, Claire Evangelista, and Elmo Delacroix Avet. Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams also appear in the book, as does noted New York art dealer Betty Parsons. (J. Richard Gruber, PhD, director emeritus of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, active independent curator, art historian, and author, most recently of Dusti Bongé, Art and Life: Biloxi, New Orleans, New York)

A Sojourn in Paradise: Jack Robinson in 1950s New Orleans

Arts & Photography

Individual Artists

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