The beautiful and lively traditional marking of generosity is celebrated in New Orleans each March 19. The tradition of St. Joseph's Day began after a severe drought in Sicily in the middle ages. In desperation, people asked St. Joseph, their patron, to intervene. They promised that if rain came they would prepare a big feast in his honor. In gratitude for prayers answered with rain, huge banquet tables were set up in public and poor people were invited to come and eat as much as they wanted. Today, special foods, linens, flowers, and statuary adorn the St. Joseph altars, built with three steps representing the Holy Trinity. Generosity marks this day, as it did the character of Joseph himself.

“Kerri’s work is lush with natural light that makes the images sensual and rich, and transforms the places she photographs into poems.” -Francis Ford Coppola

 

“One of the great photojournalists of America.” -John Mariani

 

By the age of fifteen, Kerri McCaffety had already worked for a small-town newspaper and won numerous awards for her poetry. At Houston’s High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, she majored in both photography and creative writing. She then moved to New Orleans to attend Tulane University’s Newcomb College. There she earned a degree in anthropology with a concentration in ethnographic documentary, going on to photograph people and their environs in Europe, Central Africa, and Haiti. Her first publication, Obituary Cocktail: The Great Saloons of New Orleans¸ was named Book of the Year by the New Orleans Gulf South Booksellers Association. The same group named McCaffety Author for the Year for 1998. She went on to receive the 1999 Gold Lowell Thomas Award from the Society of American Travel Writers and was named one of New Orleans Magazine’s People to Watch that same year. Her works have earned her Gold and Silver Benjamin Franklin Awards, an Alpha award, and two Silver Independent Publisher Book Awards, among other accolades. McCaffety’s writing and photojournalism have appeared in such publications as Oxford American, Town and Country, Historic Traveler, Colonial Homes, Southern Accents, Travel + Leisure, Metropolitan Home, and Louisiana Cultural Vistas. In 2007 and 2008, McCaffety served as features editor for Louisiana Homes and Gardens Magazine. She continues her award-winning work documenting the architectural and cultural history of her adoptive city of New Orleans.

ISBN: 9781589801400

Hardcover

8 x 10

144 pages

Pelican Publishing, 2003

Celebrating with St. Joseph Altars

 

Creole Italian: Sicilian Immigrants and the Shaping of New Orleans Food Culture