Fumi Nagasaka’s “Very American” Portrait of a New Orleans Marching Band

“I’d by no means actually seen something prefer it,” remembers Fumi Nagasaka of her first New Orleans Mardi Gras. “Everybody’s dressed up, the floats are amazingly embellished and there’s music on each nook.” Unsurprisingly, her second go to to the town adopted solely months after, throughout which she made contact with Saint Paul’s Faculty, one of many many marching bands that personify the vitality and effervescence of this annual two-week carnival. Over the following three years and as many visits, the Japanese-born, New York-based photographer embedded herself inside this group of round 80 boys aged between 14 and 18. The result’s her newest guide, Marching Wolves, an ethnographic-style research of Mardi Gras’ ritualised traditions and a report of the transition into manhood that it nurtures. 

Having made a profession out of capturing moments of fleeting youth, it’s little surprise the town’s wealthy marching band custom left such a deep impression on Nagasaka. Far out of your common college band, these uniformed crews are a faithful meeting of dancers, acrobats and performers who practice religiously all year long for the reward of representing their neighbourhood throughout Mardi Gras. “Usually marching bands simply play and march collectively,” says Nagasaka, “however [Saint Paul’s] use their devices as props, throwing them within the air or performing jumps. They actually work together with the viewers and the viewers is aware of who they’re as a result of they go yearly. It’s a really particular efficiency, and in a means very American.”

Utilising her expertise in road casting, Nagasaka recognized characters she needed to observe throughout her first go to to the varsity. “It could possibly be a tiny child enjoying an enormous instrument, or some form of unhealthy boy kind of character,” she explains. “I’d choose them from their apply and take their portraits and so I received to know their personalities via interviewing them and spending time collectively.” For her second go to, Nagasaka went deeper nonetheless, marching together with the band as they rehearsed and taking pictures at a frantic pace whereas taking care to keep away from flailing limbs and twirling trombones. “I used to be marching with them on a regular basis for every week, typically early morning, typically night. The youngsters actually collaborated with me, for instance, once they’re acting on a large road I needed to inform them to get just a little nearer to slot in the body, or to vary positions for the sunshine if we had been taking pictures at nighttime.”

By inserting herself on the centre of the motion, Nagasaka ceases to be a mere spectator and turns into a fellow performer, imbuing her pictures with a dynamism and power that departs from the serenity of her extra typical portraiture. “After every week’s parading collectively I started to grasp how they carry out. There’s a particular transfer I appreciated the place the youngsters form of bend backwards to the ground, so after I needed that image I needed to request the track to the drum majors, who informed 80 youngsters which track we’re going to play subsequent. They had been actually affected person with me and I’m so grateful for that.”

Throughout her closing go to to the carnival, shortly earlier than the onset of Covid in February 2020, Nagasaka sought out the scholars she’d first encountered as freshmen who had been now coming into their senior years. “Numerous the boys I’d photographed had been all of the sudden males,” she says. “One child, who I additionally photographed exterior of the band, was just a bit boy after I first met him. He appeared troubled then and didn’t need to be photographed … After I noticed him on my second go to he had a girlfriend, who was additionally a part of the parade, and after I noticed him in 2020 he’d turn out to be a drum main and was chargeable for 80 youngsters.”

For a lot of teenagers Nagasaka got here to know over the course of the venture, the marching band was a transitory second of uninhibited expression and camaraderie, but one which few continued past commencement. For Nagasaka nevertheless, this solely crystallised the significance of those pictures, which in her eyes signify an indelible report of the desires of their youth. “Numerous youngsters I photographed went on to do completely various things that had nothing to do with music,” she explains. “I needed to make this venture for them. It’s not a yearbook, it’s for them to recollect what they had been residing for and what sort of dream that they had. No matter they do, I would like them to recollect the best way they was once within the band.”

Marching Wolves by Fumi Nagasaka is printed by Kahl and is out now.