The 2025 Louisiana Book Festival will be held on Saturday, November 1.
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Richard Sexton

Home Featured Authors & Panelists Featured Participant Lineup Richard Sexton

Richard Sexton is an author/photographer whose work has been published and exhibited worldwide. Sexton’s photographs are included in The Historic New Orleans Collection, New Orleans Museum of Art, Ogden Museum of Southern Art, Frost Art Museum, Southeast Museum of Photography, Princeton University Art Museum, and High Museum of Art, among others. Sexton received the Michael P. Smith Award for Documentary Photography from the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities in 2014.

 

Schedule

Noon to 1:00 pm

State Capitol, House Committee Room 5

Picturing New Orleans in Photographs and Words

with Randolph Delehanty and Richard Sexton

 

1:15 pm to 2:00 pm

Cavalier House Books Tent

Book Signing

New Orleans: A Photo Guide to the Wild Mélange

New Orleans: A Photo Guide to the Wild Mélange is a playful and at times irreverent homage to the “northernmost Caribbean city,” one of many monikers for New Orleans. Noted local photographer Richard Sexton has focused on a panoply of subjects for which New Orleans is so well known—landmarks, streetscapes, cemeteries, music, food, markets, shops, festivals, rituals, clubs, dive bars. It’s all here, showcased in fresh, surprising ways. With a design inspired by the big picture magazines of the 1960s and 70s, the photo essay begins with the Mississippi River and culminates with Ash Wednesday, the day after Mardi Gras, and the beginning of recovery for the next cycle of ritual and revelry. Sexton’s images span over thirty years, beginning in the early 90s, right up to the present, and they include many revered New Orleans haunts and institutions that have been lost to time. The rollicking photo essay is complemented by insightful and at times quirky observations and recommendations from noted contributors. For the tourist, this is not only the perfect memento of a memorable visit, but a rich resource to use during your stay. For locals, it’s a poignant reminder—This is why I live here.

New Orleans: Elegance and Decadence

New Orleans: Elegance and Decadence focuses on the interiors, furnishings, art collections, and gardens of a handful of creative people in New Orleans in the 1990s. Dreamers and urban pioneers, they included bohemian artists, artisans, architects, preservationists, activists, antiquarians, restaurateurs, and teachers, all living outside the American mainstream. They tolerated crumbling plaster, exposed lathe, and sagging galleries in exchange for communal festivity and joie de vivre. Photographer Richard Sexton documented how and where they lived; what they hoarded, collected, and worshipped.
In this second edition, historian Randolph Delehanty weaves together the history of New Orleans from the fragments he saw in those photographs. The authors explore in words and images how the combination of climate, a strongly European and Catholic culture, African influences, and the revelry of Mardi Gras have created a modern ambience unlike that of any other city in America. Much has changed in New Orleans over the 30 years since this book first appeared, but far more has stayed the same.
The book celebrates the joyous spirit of this distinctive culture, an inspiration to everyone who pursues the art of living.