Categories: 60-Second Interview
By Chris Rose
Columnist
Frank Relle, a West Bank boy, graduated from Tulane with degrees in cognitive science and philosophy. But then he discovered photography, or it discovered him — however that goes.
After serving time in various darkrooms in New York City, he moved back to New Orleans shortly before Hurricane Katrina to begin a curious documentation of New Orleans architecture.
He shoots long exposures at night, using high-pressure sodium, mercury vapor and hot lights. The look is singular, to say the least. His work is on display through Sunday at the Terrence Sanders Gallery, 936 Royal St., in the French Quarter. Or check him out at www.frankrelle.com.
There is a unique look to your photographs. How do you describe it to people?
I realize if people haven’t seen my work, it will be very difficult to explain. I tell them: I take pictures of houses at night. And they just kind of look at me. I tell them I go out and light the houses at night to give them a strange, eerie quality.
What does it look like?
People use all these different words to describe the light, but, to me, it’s emotive. I use the light to bring out a particular subject or story I am trying to tell or trying to capture with the image. In New Orleans, every one of these houses are just like all of us crazy people here; we’ve all got our own little story. I’m trying to relay the story of people and life in New Orleans using architectural subjects to represent that.
Frank Relle
Photo by Thom Bennett
Is your work still Katrina-related?
No. But the truth is, for me — for everybody in creative fields — Katrina was such a strong theme in our lives — it came to dominate all of our work. But I was doing this work before. New Orleans has always been tied to the weather and change and to some form of catastrophe or another — and moving through that. So, to answer your question: It’s not my focus, although my work does talk about circumstances that are occurring in 2007 as they relate to post-storm life — repopulation, tear downs, and things like that.
What do people want to see when they look at your work?
It might sound strange, but that’s just it: I just want them to see. Sometimes I feel like my job as an artist, photographer, creator, is to make people more curious about their own lives and the things going on around them. I want them to be interested.
Frank Relle’s work is on display through Sunday at the Terrence Sanders Gallery, 936 Royal St., in the French Quarter.
There are a million documentarians crawling around this town. How to you make your stuff break out?
If you stay really close to home and be honest with what you’re interested in and what you see and how you see it, then it will separate itself from everybody else’s work. I mean, there are a lot of people who take pictures of houses in New Orleans. I want to capture something that makes people wonder, makes them want to look longer, makes them want to ask questions.
How do you choose your subjects?
When I go out at night, I don’t have any plan of what I’m going to shoot. I just wait until something stops me and says: Whoa! What’s going on here?
Do the houses speak to you?
(Laughs) I hate stuff like that. No, they don’t speak to me. But I can drive up and down a street and there are certain buildings I’m not interested in and other buildings that, for some reason or another, resonate with me.
We’re using a lot of artsy-fartsy terms like resonance and emotions. Are they more than just pictures?
They’re stories, stories about the lives of the people who live in these houses. Through the collections of time and through the collection of the circumstances that affect that house — which is all about the people, the people who built it, when it was built and how it was lived in — you can convey a lot in those inhabited structures. For me, then, they’re more than just pictures. But then, I’m the guy that’s out there doing this stuff.
Could you do this work in another place?
I don’t know, but I don’t think so. I would have to know another place and care about it as much as I care about New Orleans. I’ve been around the country, a lot of different places, but New Orleans is my home. I feel like I have a background of history and understanding and connection to the place that I can relay in pictures.
You have a lot of out-of-town collectors. Why do they like your work?
People tell me my photographs capture what it feels like for them to be in New Orleans.
Columnist Chris Rose can be reached at chris.rose@timespicayune.com; or at (504)¤352-2535 or (504) 826-3309. To read past columns, visit
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