Wonk and Sacabo: Reimagining New Orleans
Half a century ago, a young couple arrived in New Orleans, full of dreams and penniless. Josephine Sacabo is from Laredo, TX; Dalt Wonk from New Jersey. They’ve reinvented themselves in Europe. But after six years in the theater world of England and France, they want to come home. They’re looking for somewhere that’s neither the Northeast nor Texas. They read a florid, dated book about New Orleans that touts its “uncontrolled passion, its quaint foreign flavor, its tropic tang.” Sounds exotic. They imagine a Bohemia on the Mississippi, a haven for writers and artists, their kind of people.
“There was no good, solid, logical reason” to come to the city, Wonk says in one of his essays in New Orleans (1970-2020). “But there’s something about the place. It has an aura, a magnetism. And it offered a way of going back, but not going back.”
Wonk and Sacabo find an apartment on Burgundy Street and set about discovering the actual city. It transcends clichéd guidebooks and French Quarter murder mysteries. They embrace its authenticity, its amalgam of African-Caribbean, European and American influences, the way it bares its soul and celebrates itself. Their vision of the city infuses their art.
Josephine’s photographs portray the rich humanity and odd contrasts of New Orleans — a child in a doorway next to a poster of exotic dancers, two elderly ladies gossiping on a park bench against a background of young cadets at attention, a solitary old man in a wide-brimmed hat gazing out at the fog-shrouded Mississippi.
Dalt’s work shows his wide range as an observer and storyteller, from a powerful profile of novelist John Kennedy Toole to a touching account of the doomed, reclusive Orchard sisters. He has an extraordinary knack for uncovering people’s hidden motives, telling the true tale behind a newspaper’s sensationalist headline, and delving into the complexity of his subjects, whether famous or obscure.
Wonk and Sacabo are now inseparable from the place they imagined and evoked in plays and stories and photographs. Once you’ve been steeped in their world and their art, you see the city anew.
– Jim Amoss, former editor, The Times-Picayune
New Orleans (1970 – 2020): A Portrait of the City
Purchase link: https://www.octaviabooks.com/product/new-orleans-1970-2020-portrait-city-dalt-wonk-photographs-joesphine-sacabo
New Orleans (1970 – 2020): A Portrait of the City.
Written by Dalt Wonk, Photographs by Josephine Sacabo
Hardcover, 10 x 12 1/5 inches, 208 pages, 39 photographs
Published by Luna Press, $25
Author Discussion & Book Signing
Wednesday, November 20, 6 – 8 pm
Octavia Books, 513 Octavia St, New Orleans
