Image courtesy of Cheryl Gerber
In 2020—the historic centennial of the 19th Amendment’s passage—it’s true that the road to equality is far from fully traveled. But if New Orleans might serve as a microcosm, then New Orleans photographer Cheryl Gerber’s new book Cherchez la Femme proves we’ve come quite a ways.
Opening the tome, one is greeted by the smiling face of the “Queen of Creole” Leah Chase, who extends to the reader a plate bright with rice, okra, tomatoes, and big gulf shrimp. Flipping onward, Rosalie “Lady Tambourine”—eyes closed—pulses alongside a brass band on the streets of the city; Mignon Faget holds up a red piece of jewelry in her home; Sister Helen Prejean shares a chapter with the Servants of Mary and Voodoo priestesses alike; Mardi Gras Indian Queens take up their space in paints, feathers, and beads; and women of every age, color, and background stand shoulder to shoulder holding up signs demanding “RESPECT.”
"I looked at my own photo archives, and realized that so many of my subjects were male chefs, male artists, male businessmen. From that point on, my eye became more trained to women.” —Cheryl Gerber
The idea for a book on the women of the Crescent City first occurred to Gerber at the 2017 New Orleans Women’s March. “I was looking through my lenses on the front lines,” she said. “I had never seen that many people assemble in this city. I couldn’t believe the diversity of women I saw there.”
She returned home with the genesis of an idea, and Googled “notable New Orleanians.” On Wikipedia’s list, she found that eighty percent of the individuals listed were men. “Then I looked at my own photo archives, and realized that so many of my subjects were male chefs, male artists, male businessmen. From that point on, my eye became more trained to women.”
Organized into chapters celebrating women in different spaces of New Orleans’ diverse fabric—culinary arts, music, philanthropy, spirituality, Mardi Gras, and burlesque—Gerber’s photos are accompanied by essays exploring the legacy of the city’s women in each of these areas.
Because the thing is, as Gerber is pointing out, the presence and influence of women in this city is nothing new. It’s always been here, from the Ursuline nuns’ oversight of the city’s hospitals and schools to Micaela de Pontalba’s vision of the Quarter to Mahalia Jackson’s status as “the single most powerful black woman in the United States.”
As Anne Gisleson writes in the book’s foreword, “Women have always had a slant relationship to recorded history, essential yet underrepresented, their achievements explicitly or implicitly qualified by a nevertheless or in spite of.”
The hole to fill, explained Gerber, is not in women’s capability, but in their recognition—in their ability to be seen. In Cherchez la Femme, she captures them in all their glory, places them in front of us, and shows the world what you find when you look for the woman.
Purchase Cherchez La Femme at upress.state.ms.us.
