Forty Sundays a Year: New Orleans Second Line Parades

On roughly forty Sundays a year, the hardworking members of New Orleans Social Aid and Plea¬sure Clubs take turns celebrating the everyday joy and pains of the community in a flashy display of footwork and high fashion, hip-hop bass and thundering brass. Dedicated high-energy revelers suit up for a four-hour funk-fueled strut through the streets (and stairways, stoops, porches, and even roofs) we call home, turning their neighborhoods into tem¬porary dance clubs in a wildly kinetic weekly tradition that showcases New Orleans’s musical, dance, and neighborhood traditions.

I started photographing SAPC Second Lines spo¬radically when I arrived in New Orleans in 2001, but became more dedicated to consistently documenting the tradition around 2009. After the city’s near-death experience following Hurricane Katrina and a year away from the city, I made shooting the parades part of my own weekly rhythm as a way to both preserve individual memories and serve the communities that, generation after generation, express themselves on the streets and keep a distinctive culture alive in street party form.