October, 2014, Vissi d'Arte Books

PHOTOGRAPHY AND TEXT BY
KERRI MCCAFFETY

LUXURY, INEQUITY & YELLOW FEVER
LIVING LEGACIES AND THE STORY OF OLD NEW ORLEANS

The Hermann-Grima House and the Gallier House physically connect us to the New Orleans of the early 19th-century—a romantic, decadent and mysterious time, a time filled with wealth, culture, slavery, oppression, hurricanes and disease. Side by side with the affluence of antebellum luxury was an astoundingly stratified society of groups within groups, and with distinctions of race, sex, nationality, religion and social standing that were as intricate as any caste system. Finally, the city’s environment, including unforgiving weather, sickly swamp conditions and rampant urban growth, created a dramatic backdrop.

The Hermann-Grima and Gallier Historic houses are not just important architectural landmarks. Their parlors are much more than just beautifully appointed rooms. They actively tell the story of the men who built them and the challenges they faced, the Free People of Color and the immigrants who were the craftsmen creating the amazing interiors, and the enslaved workers who ran the day-to-day business of the homes.

Read the review in the Times-Picayune

IPPY Winner! 2015

City Park is as magical and unique as New Orleans itself. The 1,300-acre outdoor oasis has enchanted New Orleanians since 1854, making it one of the nation’s oldest urban parks. Each year, millions of visitors stroll under the same historic oaks and picturesque moss canopies that served as the backdrop for dances, concerts and even gentlemanly duels or affaires d’honneur in the 19th century.

Francis Coppola has said that Kerri McCaffety transforms the places she photographs into poems, and that’s what she has done with her documentary of New Orleans City Park. This book is a celebration of one of the premier urban parks in the nation in words and pictures, a poem by Kerri McCaffety.

McCaffety tells the fascinating history of City Park from its earliest beginnings and brings the text to life with more than 200 photographs. These dramatic and beautiful photographs document the many faces of City Park from the old roses in the Botanical Garden to modern art in the Besthoff sculpture garden, from sprawling green spaces to fireworks over the Peristyle, from the glittering lights of Celebration in the Oaks to swans on the lagoon and much, much more.

In New Orleans one certainly senses, as William Faulkner wrote, that “the past isn't dead. It's not even past.” Still, a fresh and exciting 21st-century interpretation of the old themes emerges. The style reflects a prevalent brightness about the city's future. Within the new generation of New Orleans style is evolving a design philosophy that leaves behind period and traditional interiors. A new set of common threads runs through this new aesthetic. Many of the old elements are there. The antiquity and mystery are still there. There are hints of the extravagance of the 19th-century port city, and we still find the past woven into the tapestry, but what is emerging as New Orleans new elegance is lighter, more open, and reconfigured to suit our lives in the 21st century.

Award winning documenter of local architecture and culture, Kerri McCaffety looks at the city’s most innovative and iconic interiors in a quest to define the essence of New Orleans’ unique style.

What is it that makes New Orleans different from any other place on Earth? How does it show in our rooms? How have styles changed in the twenty-first century? McCaffety poses these questions to designers, scholars and artists best known for capturing the soul of the city and tells the story with their words and her photographs.

The book includes over 200 photographs documenting more than 40 homes and an introduction by Julia Reed.