New Orleans Voodoo Alley

    In 2006, when I returned to New Orleans after a nine year absence, Cameron and I stayed with a friend on the border of the 8th and 9th wards, near the Mississippi River.

    Behind her house was an alleyway, this alleyway had a guardian standing at the entrance, and was littered with paintings and the odd statue or two.

    I was told that the alley -and it’s magic- had kept the Katrina flood waters away from the immediate houses.

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The guardian at the end of the alley, with cigarette offerings in its metal teeth.
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Paintings of death scattered about the wooden fence.
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Painting of death, wearing a tuxedo, free of its chains, and with a burning heart at its feet. And for some reason the word ‘vote’ written on the skeleton’s correctly placed heart.
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A cross the correct way up, and a statue of The Virgin Mary (Jesus?) with its head and hands missing sitting beside a door step.
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The Skull of the Dead, with top hat and long red tongue, painted on a gate between houses, hidden in an alleyway.
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