300NE W ORLE ANS

TRICENTENNIAL

1718 ~ 2018

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Known as the first American Surrealist photographer, Laughlin spent most of his life in New Orleans. Using staged scenes and multiple exposures, he juxtaposed images on top of one another, placing ghostlike figures in abandoned plantation homes or buildings.

He tried to animate all things, even buildings, with the “spirit of man,” he said, and in doing so,

tried to capture the “soul” of abandoned plantations around Louisiana.

Laughlin, who was self-taught, started as a pho-tographer with the Works Progress

Administration and then as a photogra-pher on Army Corps

of Engineers and other government projects. He also worked for a short time for Vogue magazine. His creative work, between 1935 and 1965, included 17,000 images of planta-tions, cemeteries, buildings and city scenes. His work was published in books including “Ghosts Along the Mississippi” and “New Or-leans and Its Living Past.” Laughlin lived for 35 years in the Upper Pontabla apartments with a collection of 30,000 rare books.‘Self-Portrait of the Photographer as a Metaphysician’

‘Elegy for Moss Land ‘

‘The Masks Grow to Us’ ‘The Autonomous Spiral, Number 2’

Surrealist photographer Clarence John Laughlin took ghostly images from his imagination and out of the corners of his eyes and put them on photographic paper.

Clarence John Laughlin’s

best-known book, ‘Ghosts Along the Mississippi,’ was

first published in 1948.

From Bienville to Bourbon Street to bounce. 300 moments that make New Orleans unique. WHAT

HAPPENED

Books after Clarence Laugh-lin’s ‘Ghosts Along the Mis-sissippi’ contained more of his surreal work.