Katherine Scherer

I started photographing the Society of St. Anne parade over twenty years ago when living in New Orleans. Unlike the Mardi Gras experience in the French Quarter, this walking parade had an authentic neighborhood vibe with the elaborately costumed participants as main spectacle. Shooting exclusively in black and white until 2005, my early work was in the vein of street photography, but as I began to experiment with different technical formats, the street documentary aspect began to have pictorial inclinations. Additionally, I fully embraced shooting in color in 2006, which happened to be the first Mardi Gras after Hurricane Katrina and, in retrospect, I appreciated how the saturation of color spoke to the resilient and still vibrant city.

 

Especially when documenting familiar settings and people in familiar settings, I strive to communicate the experience in an original way, hopefully resulting in a compelling portrait, that exhibits its own truth and its own beauty… and above all, that portrays a celebration of the individual and the moment.

 

I think of my photographs as pictorial street photography that document the human experience as expressed through the lens of culture, history, and geography.