Installation view of Dapper Bruce Lafitte: A Time Before Katrina at the New Orleans Museum of Art. Photo courtesy of the New Orleans Museum of Art.

 Desire Projects, 9th ward downtown New Orleans, LA. A time before Hurricane Katrina during the days of my great-grandparents and grandparents. A time before that, welfare and crack cocaine came to NOLA. Black America, the culture, Black Indian crews, second-line parades, everyone from the Desire and other projects, and the whole city would go to an event without trouble, no guns, no beefing, homeowners, and happy people even if they called the projects a jungle. It was a village to me.

-Dapper Bruce Lafitte, T.D.B.C.

Dapper Bruce Lafitte boldly documents Black life, cultural pride, and institutional memory in New Orleans. Lafitte works with ink on paper, using fine-tip pens, markers, and handcrafted paper to create bold and graphic compositions that can be interchangeably described as documentation, celebration, and requiem of pre-Katrina New Orleans. These large-scale drawings can be seen as both personal archives and communal testaments.

Lafitte’s primary subject matter includes the city’s former landmarks—its iconic high school marching bands, public housing projects, and neighborhoods. Many of his works pay tribute to the New Orleans-based high school band culture while also mourning the erasure of institutions and traditions—many of which were dismantled or displaced in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

While his works evoke nostalgia, they are also acts of memory, cultural resistance, and a celebration of vibrant communities and institutions before Hurricane Katrina in a city increasingly impacted by rapid transformation and gentrification. Lafitte’s art becomes a living map of survival, legacy, and unrelenting pride through meticulous detail, hand-written commentary, and devotion to place.

 Dapper Bruce dedicates this installation to his younger sister, NA-NA.