Lynn Abbott, New Orleans 2025. Photo by John McCusker
Between 1973 and 2002, I was obsessed with photography. My medium was 35mm black-and-white, and my subject was street life and culture. I started out taking pictures in my hometown, Richmond, Virginia. In 1980, I moved to New Orleans and kept on taking pictures. I thought I’d be a photographer for life, but things changed. Not that something dramatic happened; I just put the camera down one day, and have yet to pick it back up. While I was still taking pictures, and afterwards, I also called myself a musician and/or a music researcher and writer. For nearly 20 years, I played drums with Bruce Daigrepont’s Cajun Band, and for nearly 20 years after that, I worked at Tulane University’s Hogan Jazz Archive. I’m the coauthor of five books published by the University Press of Mississippi: Out of Sight (2002), Ragged but Right (2007), To Do This, You Must Know How (2013), The Original Blues (2017), and Stand the Storm (2025). In the interest of rounding things out, I’m posting this online portfolio of my unpublished photography.
Lynn Abbott 2026