SWAMP SNOW

by Madeline Rose

Like everyone in New Orleans on January 21, 2025, I woke up that morning to discover I lived in a snow globe. I looked out my bedroom window to a pristine, quiet backyard that was familiar as it was uncanny. A surge of loneliness swept over me and pushed me to grab my camera. 

In the swamp, snow makes everything strange. Your neighborhood is now  a carless playground, soundtracked by the crunch of your boots and the screams of never-before-seen teenagers hurling snowballs at each other. Two neighbors construct a human-sized “snow-creature” with the earnestness of grown men and the whimsy of their inner children. The yellow walls of the grocery appear green; the sky above it, a deep purple. Most untouched, your local cemetery is suddenly imbued with a newfound sanctity and stillness. 

There was simply no dodging the collective joy of this once-in-a-lifetime weather event, just as there was no ignoring the darker context around it. Between the Bourbon St. Attack on New Years’ Day and the Los Angeles wildfires, January 2025 had been defined by rampant man-made catastrophe. I knew a changing climate was the darker undercurrent of the snow. It was really the death of David Lynch days before these images were taken that pushed me to capture this duality. 

I knew this darkness would be more apparent on day 2. I’d heard about busted pipes and broken hands and knew the snow would be different, it wouldn’t be as pretty. I wanted to take photos that weren’t as pretty, and grabbed the Tamron wide-angle lens I haven’t touched since I moved to New Orleans in 2011.

My street had clearly been driven on, and Esplanade had become an ice rink. I returned to the cemetery, only to be unimpressed–that’s where I found a blue blow on the ground. It made me laugh. So did a sign that read “yard sale.” I documented all the snow creatures I could find and made sure to capture every friends’ home who has left New Orleans in recent years. But above me, a blue cloudless sky–a gorgeous day, full of ephemera..

I have a soft spot for Day 2. But I know that what sticks, are the images born from Day 1–moments captured in lonely stillness, immortalized in togetherness as the day we got to be children again, if only for a moment. Nothing lasts forever, but how beautiful when we can hold it all.