Person

The Parish Work

SV Simone Vaughn

Since 2019 I have been photographing people who keep the coast standing up: ironworkers, oyster boat crews and the levee maintenance hands nobody photographs until something breaks. Twenty-one families so far, shot on 6x7 film and printed by hand in the back of the studio. Nobody commissioned this and nobody has bought it. The subject gets the first print before anyone else sees the frame. This is where the work lives until I find a wall big enough for it.

01 How it is made

One camera, one lens, available light where possible, and a lot of driving. The method matters because it is the reason people let me in.

The camera and the reason for it

Everything is shot on a Mamiya RB67 with a 90mm, because a slow camera changes how a person sits.

The RB67 is heavy, waist level and loud. You cannot machine gun it. Ten frames a roll means I think before each one, and the person in front of me hears that mirror slap and understands something just happened. Digital makes people perform, because the picture is on a screen two seconds later and they start managing it. Film makes them wait. In the waiting they usually stop posing. I use one lens for the whole project so the pictures sit together on a wall. Available light when the shop or the boat has any, one battery strobe through a small umbrella when it does not. No stylist, no assistant on these, no seamless. People stand where they work.

First print to the subject

Every person photographed gets the first hand print of themselves before the picture is shown anywhere.

This started as a courtesy and became the rule of the project. Within a month of the shoot I make a 16 by 20 fibre print of the best frame and hand it over. If they hate it we pick another. If they want the negative pulled, it gets pulled, and it has happened twice. It has cost me two pictures I badly wanted to keep. It has also meant that when I call a shop steward in Chalmette who has never met me, somebody in his local already has a print of his brother-in-law on the wall, and I get in the gate. Trust is the whole budget on a project with no budget.

What it costs to run

About 4,000 a year of my own money in film, chemistry, paper and gas, funded by the commercial work.

Roughly 120 rolls of 120 film a year, processing on top, fibre paper at about nine dollars a sheet for the big prints, plus selenium, fixer and the water bill for hour long washes. Add gas down to Plaquemines and Empire and back. It runs near 4,000 annually. The commercial calendar pays for it. Forty shoot days of menus, headshots and construction progress buys me the film and the Sundays. I have never applied for a grant for this and I am open to being told that is stubborn rather than principled.
02 The three trades so far

Ironworkers, oyster crews and levee maintenance. Twenty-one families, six parishes, seven years and counting.

Ironworkers, Orleans and Jefferson

Nine families, mostly Local 58 members, shot on decks and in shop yards between shifts.

Started here because a connector named Ray let me ride up on a lift in 2019 and did not once tell me to be careful, which I took as a compliment. Nine families now. I shoot at shift change, in the yard or the gang box area, never during a critical pick. The pictures that work are the ones where the hands are visible. Burns, tape, a wedding ring worn thin on one side. I have learned to shoot low and let the steel do the rest of the frame.

Oyster crews, Plaquemines and St. Bernard

Seven boats out of Empire and Hopedale, photographed on deck at four in the morning.

This is the hardest section to shoot and the one I would keep if I could only keep one. You leave the dock in the dark, the deck never stops moving, and salt spray will eat a camera in a season if you do not rinse it every night. Seven boats so far. Two of the families in it have since sold their leases. That is the actual subject of the project, though I did not know it when I started: I am photographing trades in the middle of deciding whether to continue.

Levee maintenance, five parishes

Five crews who mow, inspect and repair the flood protection system and are invisible until a storm.

Nobody photographs these crews. They cut grass on the levee, run the pumps, check the floodgates, and the only time a camera shows up is when the water is already coming over. I have five crews so far and I want ten. The frame I keep chasing is a gate inspection at first light with the whole batture behind it. Have not got it yet. Two more winters and I will.
03 Where it goes next

Forty prints need a wall for a month, and the archive needs a permanent home that is not my hall closet.

Looking for a wall, not a gallery

I want to hang forty 16 by 20 prints somewhere the people in them would actually walk in.

A gallery in the Warehouse District is not the audience. Union halls, library branches, a church basement in Chalmette, the lobby of a hall on Airline: those are the rooms. I will hang and strike it myself, I have my own frames and hardware, and I do not need the space to insure anything. One month is enough. If your local, branch or hall has forty running feet, get in touch and we will look at the space together.

Current darkroom nights, commercial availability and how to reach me about hanging the work.

🔗Studio and darkroom schedulebayousilverstudio.com↗