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New Orleans is so rich in culture. It's a necessity and important to document the inhabitants of New Orleans no matter how many people documented it before. The people in the monograph “Come See About Me” became my family. I knew everybody, and I did meaningful portraits for people on the street. They expected me to do their portrait, and they would come on Sundays with the family dressed nice, and I would do an on-the-spot family portrait in a huge crowd situation. They loved the process and would pay me five dollars the following week for the portrait. I made enough money on Sundays to support myself… and it gave me street credibility because no one else was bringing the pictures back to the people. They were taking (stealing) their pictures and never returning. The New Orleans people really loved my images and appreciated them. They hung them on their walls at home in recognition and celebration. They would always say: ‘Don’t Forget to Come See About Me.’

“…Michelle has the grand gifts of grit, fearlessness and foresight combined with a working woman’s work ethic and love of the people and places she’s photographing based on her abundant talent, precise trade-craft and fundamental philosophy that life is precious, and tomorrow is promised to no one.” - Nelson Eubanks

· Topic Popularity: Michelle L. Elmore ‘Come See About Me’ celebrates the Second Line tradition in parades organized by Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs (SAPCs) with brass band parades in New Orleans, Louisiana. Second lining has been called "the quintessential New Orleans art form – a jazz funeral without a body.” Historically, the African-American community began second lines as neighborhood celebrations. As it is a celebration, second-lines are a popular tradition among New Orleans weddings. It signifies the beginning of a new life together. The Second Line consists of people who follow the band to enjoy the music, dance, and engage in "community." The Second Line's style of traditional dance, in which participants dance and walk along with the SAPCs in a free-form style with parasols and handkerchiefs, is called "second-lining". This is the “joie de vivre” everyone talks about in New Orleans. This feeling of pure happiness that swells up in your chest. This is what makes this city so different from anywhere else on Earth.

Elmore will never forget Mardi Gras Day 1997. It was right after both her grandparents died and she felt heartbroken and alone. She had a flat tire because she had run over a whiskey bottle. A guy stopped to help her, a total stranger. He asked her why her eyes were different than most white people. He didn’t mean physically. He meant something else, and she understood. It was as if he could see all the loss her my life. And right then she understood that people in New Orleans deal with tremendous loss and struggle all the time, and that there’s joy and faith that feels very real. She had never been in a place where you could look at death as a celebration of the person’s life. For the first time in her life, She didn’t feel alone. And that was it. She moved to New Orleans and inspired by this life changing encounter. It was this symbolic encounter that inspired Elmore's creative pursuits and the the monograph 'Come See About Me.

In Michelle L. Elmore ‘Come See About Me’ there is danger and dislocation in the streets of New Orleans, and too often a sadness born of pain, loss and injustice. Yet there is also devastating beauty of a kind that reflects and creates indelible joy. This beauty draws upon both grace and investments of time, spirit and hard work, and it is imbued with a dignity that can be neither extinguished nor taken away. For anyone with open eyes and ears and heart, these truths reveal themselves as rolled into one larger transcendent truth, inscrutable at first and then slowly knowable—given the right attitude and approach—through immersion. This larger truth may be singular to New Orleans and to those born and raised in the city, yet it is rooted in many things (not least Africa) and is available to anyone who comes correctly and with modest and honest intent.

Michelle L. Elmore’s ‘Come See About Me’ is captured moments in the most beloved city in the United States of America. It’s not like, any other city in America and it wouldn’t have it any other way. For many of New Orleans citizens past and present flipping through the pages of this book is a homecoming. We were there, maybe not this day, but we remember because the images provoke memories of happier times. This book represents a collective of souls that have relocated or been dislocated since the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. The people in this book called New Orleans home. Elmore's gift to those that had the greatest time of their lives and for a moment, as they turn the pages can still hear the music. Le Bon Temps Roule, translation: Let the Good Times Roll.

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