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Bridgework: Repatriating Mardi Gras Indian Photography With The House Of Dance And Feathers, Rachel Breunlin

Rachel Breunlin

This article from the summer of 2013 issue of African Arts discusses the politics of representation around photographing Mardi Gras Indians, and how the House of Dance and Feathers, a small, community-based museum in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, has served as a site of memory. Using in-depth interviews from Ronald W. Lewis, the director of the museum, photographers, and Mardi Gras Indians around the city, it discusses how photography is used in and outside the tradition, and how creating a catalogue with the House of Dance and Feathers became a collaborative ethnography in repatriation.