"It [Mardi Gras] is a thing that could hardly exist in the practical North....For the soul of it is the romantic, not the funny and the grotesque. Take away the romantic mysteries, the kings and knights and big-sounding titles, and Mardi Gras would die, down there in the South."

- Mark Twain (1896), Life on the Mississippi


These photographs were all taken during the last Mardi Gras in New Orleans before Hurrican Katrina.


Nicholas Mele