Bourbon Street

I’ve been documenting Bourbon Street for nearly a decade, while hauling tourists and locals around on a pedicab, or just walking alone beneath the neon lights. These 13 blocks, situated in the spine of the French Quarter, offer some of the most concentrated and spectacular displays of humanity in the United States. Visitors come to escape the circumstances of their daily lives, but to walk the strip is to undergo rapid fire confrontation: the tourist economy, the lawlessness, the thrill, the desperation, the style, the addiction, the humor, the loneliness, the sex. Bourbon Street isn’t for the faint of heart; you’ll find people from every walk of life there, side by side. It is a great equalizer—the rich and poor, different races and ethnicities, opposing worldviews, old and young—every kind of person comes looking for some kind of transcendence. But, ultimately, they are confronted by the full spectrum of life, in all its darkness and its light.

—Avery Leigh White