Chef Susan Spicer, musician George Porter Jr., singer Irma Thomas and Mayor LaToya Cantrell are some of the roughly 100 New Orleanians who have posed for a coronavirus-era photo while holding a blue street sign from New Orleans' Hope Street.
The collection of portraits, titled "Hopefornola," has been posted to Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. The ongoing project is intended to show solidarity during the COVID-19 crisis and to express optimism, despite all.
“I want people to see themselves in these pictures,” said artist and gallery owner Jonathan Ferrara, who conceived the project. “The inspiration is supposed to be ‘hope is everywhere.'”
On Wednesday morning, Ferrara arrived at a COVID-19 testing station set up in a basketball court at Comiskey Park in Mid-City. There, he met with Dr. Jennifer Avegno, head of the New Orleans Health Department, who has led the local struggle against the rampaging virus.
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Surrounded by several staff members, Avegno held the blue street sign before her like a shield and spread her feet in a sturdy pose as the camera clicked.
Of course, Avegno said, gestures like Ferrara’s Hope Street photo project aren’t going to solve the problem of a worldwide contagion. But, she said, “Everybody needs a release.”
“New Orleans needs to express itself creatively,” she said, “and everyone can live vicariously through that expression.”
The series of photos is one of those “small things that keep us going,” Avegno said.
After Wednesday’s photo shoot, Ferrara waved and shouted his thanks to the doctor — maintaining a judicious social distance all the while. He sprayed the Hope Street sign with sanitizing liquid, then he and his two cohorts rushed off to photograph songwriter Paul Sanchez in the Bywater.
It was just the start of a busy day. Because of the lockdown, all the otherwise-busy chefs and university presidents and entertainers have time to participate, Ferrara said, “so we’re just rippin’ and runnin.’”
Ferrara said that during his photo shoot, Al “Carnival Time” Johnson stood on his porch singing “it’s quarantine time and everybody’s staying home.”
The idea for the project popped up during what would have been the first weekend of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. Ferrara said he and saxophonist Derek Huston, photographer Michael Burke and a handful of other pals always hang out together at the festival.
So despite the cancellation of the 2020 event, the gang got together to honor their tradition by making a cellphone video of the eerily quiet Fair Ground gates to share with out-of-state friends.
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Afterward, Huston showed his buddies some discarded street signs that he’d found and tossed into his car. One bore the word "Hope," the name of a street that traverses the 7th Ward. Ferrara was struck by the irony of the Hope Street sign.
“I’m not sure I was the most hopeful person at the time,” he said. “For the first five weeks (of the coronavirus shutdown), I just sat on my porch not knowing what to do.”
Mayor LaToya Cantrell with Hope Street sign
PHOTO BY JONATHAN FERRARA
Ferrara asked Burke to photograph him with the Hope Street sign at the forlorn locked gates of the fest, symbolically defying the virus. It was a cathartic moment for Ferrara, and he predicted it might be cathartic for others.
What if he and Huston and Burke invited iconic New Orleanians to hold up the sign for a picture, then spread the images far and wide on social media? Thus, the trio began its quest to document hope via digital photography.
Ferrara is completely swept up in the activity, he said. It’s been a tonic.
“I haven’t been this alive in 10 years,” he said.
Ferrara intends to expand the "Hopefornola" project to include ordinary New Orleanians, and to make duplicate signs to distribute, so others can conduct their own branches of the campaign.
“It could mean hope for families, hope for friends, hope for the universe,” Ferrara said. “Why not have hope go viral?”