I started visiting New Orleans barbershops on Friday afternoons. Many of the subjects in my monograph "Ya Heard Me" were Gangsta' Rap artists. I began documenting their day-to-day lifestyles in the neighborhoods they were from. In the two years leading up to Hurricane Katrina, I shot thousands of photographs of these young people. I realized the moniker "soldiers" by which they refer to themselves was not an affectation. The average life expectancy in this demographic is 25 years. They speak, live and interact with an urgency that I would imagine exists on battlefields. I have personally witnessed over 50 shootings. One day, one of my subjects was shot through the chest. The bullet passed through his body, missing both his heart and spine by fractions of an inch. Apparently, the slug was so hot that it cauterized the wound on the way through and it didn't bleed. He went home to lie down for a few hours and was back on the street the next day.

Author: Michelle Elmore
Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Artvoices Art Books
Published: 10/10/2017
Pages: 124
Weight: 1.85lbs
Size: 9.13h x 12.05w x 0.55d
ISBN: 9780998748412

About the Author
Elmore, Michelle L.: - Elmore began traveling to New Orleans in 1989, fresh from personal loss. A decade later, she was living in the city with her young son Jack Marley, their lives centered around the people and places, the sounds and sights, the rituals and rhythms captured in these frames. She left New Orleans in 2005, after the flood that resulted from the levee failures that followed Hurricane Katrina. She had $69 in the bank, and had lost many of her personal possessions. But she thought to pack up and move her negatives two weeks earlier.