On view: September 15 – October 17, 2018
Private opening reception: Saturday, September 15, 2018, 6-9 PM
NEW ORLEANS, LA – Martine Chaisson Gallery is pleased to present Fish Town by
photographer J.T. Blatty. Along with an exhibit of 34 prints from her series – all shot
on 120 mm film - the artist will be introducing her newly published and
corresponding book Fish Town: Down the road to Louisiana’s Vanishing Fishing
Communities.
The book as well as the exhibit give an intimate look into the lives of Louisiana’s
coastal fishing communities. The long term photo-documentary project (2012-
2017) and subsequent publication include 137 color photographs and an
introduction by the author, recollections by longstanding members of the fishing
communities, informative notes about each photograph, and a conclusion by Craig E.
Colten, Carl O. Sauer Professor of Geography at Louisiana State University, who
offers a compelling short history of the communities and Blatty's remarkable book.
10% of print and book sales from opening night will be donated to Coastal
Communities Consulting, Inc., a non-profit organization serving Southeast Louisiana’s
fishermen, fishing-dependent small businesses, and their families.
"Down the road" from New Orleans and other points north is a world unlike any
other. Settled during the late 1600s by fisherfolk who came here from as far away as
the Canary Islands, southeastern Louisiana has been a natural paradise for
centuries. But with the channelization of waterways and the building of canals
associated with the extraction and shipment of oil and natural gas - as well as the
loss of protective wetlands to withstand hurricanes and a rising sea during the past
century - the area's unique lands and way of life are threatened.
Fish Town preserves, through photography and oral history recordings, the cultural
and environmental life of southeastern Louisiana's fishing communities. Because of
the vanishing coastline, people who are multi-generations deep in their fishing
traditions have watched their towns quietly slip toward extinction for decades, with
few means of historic preservation. These are the same places that have not only
made New Orleans an epicenter of fresh seafood dining, but have also traditionally
served as getaways for New Orleanian families, providing them with an escape to
nature where time is spent together sport fishing on the lakes and bayous and
gathering around crab and crawfish boils.
Jenn Tuero (J. T.) Blatty was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1978. She graduated
from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 2000 and served six years
as an active-duty U.S. Army officer, deploying with the first troops into Afghanistan
following 9/11 and again into Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom. After
completing her service to the military and inspired by a love of capturing life, people
and her personal experiences with disposable cameras, notebooks, and pens, she
pursued photography and writing as her career. She currently resides in New
Orleans, where she returned in 2010, after a photo internship with National
Geographic Traveler. In addition to working commissions as a freelance
photographer, she is also a represented artist, a correspondent for the New Orleans
Advocate and a FEMA Disaster Reservist photographer. Blatty's work has been
exhibited in the Multimedia Moscow House of Photography in Russia, the Borges
Cultural Center in Argentina, the Detroit Center for Contemporary Photography, and
the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans, among other museums and
galleries. Her photographs and articles have appeared in PDN Magazine, CNN
Photos, Newsweek/The Daily Beast, the Oxford American, National Geographic
Traveler, Charleston Magazine, Savannah Magazine, U.S.A. Today, and Smithsonian
Magazine, among many others. Fish Town: Down the Road to Louisiana's Vanishing
Fishing Communities is a Fall 2018 book title under UVA Press/George F. Thompson
Publishing.
J.T. is currently engaged with two military related projects, writing a book about the
experiences in the military during a time of combat and the adaptations she faced as
a young officer graduating from West Point a year before 9/11, and the other a
documentary project working with the volunteer soldiers and veterans of the
ongoing war in eastern Ukraine.
About Martine Chaisson Gallery
Martine Chaisson Gallery is located in the New Orleans’ Historic Warehouse District
at 727 Camp Street. With an emphasis on quality, the gallery represents emerging
and established artists providing a variety of original contemporary art including
painting, drawing, photography, and sculpture to enhance both corporate and
individual environments.
For more information please contact Kristen Elizabeth Grant at 504.302.7942 or
martinechaissongallery@gmail.com.
