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"The mysteries of the French Quarter have yielded themselves to Kerri's camera like uncorked perfumes. What kind of camera does she have? There is a mystery-uncorking, poetry-uncapping, surprise-producing mechanism inside it. Kodak doesn't make it. There is only one such instrument, and I am grateful that Kerri owns it. The French Quarter is grateful, too. The old coquette never had it so good."
--Andrei Codreiscu, National Public Radio correspondent and author of Messiah
"This is the real Vieux Carrï¿1/2, rarely seen by casual visitors, beautifully rendered in evocative color photographs. The visual texture of its design, detail and patina is palpable."
--Frank W. Masson, AIA
"Kerri McCaffety's photographs represent the haunting, shabby grandeur of the French Quarter. Though her subjects are diverse, they share an aura which few photographers ever capture on film. Kerri's images reveal an inner city suspended somewhere in time, languid in its sultry air and splendid in its ethereal light."
--M. Lindsay Bierman, Southern Accents
"McCaffety knows how to capture the fleeting beauty of a moment."
--Susan Larson, Times-Picayune
"What a fine photographer. . . . It takes a red-headed woman to shoot pictures like that."
--John Mariani, Esquire
About the author
"Kerri's work is lush with natural light that makes the images sensual and rich, and transforms the places she photographs into poems." --Francis Ford Coppola
"One of the great photojournalists of America." --John Mariani
By the age of fifteen, Kerri McCaffety had already worked for a small-town newspaper and won numerous awards for her poetry. At Houston's High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, she majored in both photography and creative writing. She then moved to New Orleans to attend Tulane University's Newcomb College. There she earned a degree in anthropology with a concentration in ethnographic documentary, going on to photograph people and their environs in Europe, Central Africa, and Haiti.
Her first publication,
Obituary Cocktail: The Great Saloons of New Orleans, was named Book of the Year by the New Orleans Gulf South Booksellers Association. The same group named McCaffety Author for the Year for 1998. She went on to receive the 1999 Gold Lowell Thomas Award from the Society of American Travel Writers and was named one of
New Orleans Magazine's People to Watch that same year. Her works have earned her Gold and Silver Benjamin Franklin Awards, an Alpha award, and two Silver Independent Publisher Book Awards, among other accolades.
McCaffety's writing and photojournalism have appeared in such publications as
Oxford American, Town and Country, Historic Traveler, Colonial Homes, Southern Accents, Travel + Leisure, Metropolitan Home, and
Louisiana Cultural Vistas. In 2007 and 2008, McCaffety served as features editor for
Louisiana Homes and Gardens Magazine. She continues her award-winning work documenting the architectural and cultural history of her adoptive city of New Orleans.
Summary
For many, the French Quarter is New Orleans, yet how much do they really know about the Vieux Carre? This illustated book invites readers to discover a multitude of hidden marvels including the 1828 Bourbon Street mansion of Lindy Boggs, U.S. ambassador to the Vatican and former congresswoman.
