The Secret Life Of Old New Orleans

"...[A] display at the Philadelphia Museum of Art until April 30 resonates eerily with recent news photos. The show, entitled "The Secret Life of Buildings: Photographs by Clarence John Laughlin," displays images of ghostly ruins, the remnants of once-proud homes in New Orleans and southern Louisiana. The images, from more than a half-century ago, portray long-vanished mansions but evoke the current, devastated landscape after last summer's hurricanes.

...Laughlin, called "the Edgar Allan Poe of the camera," infuses his work with the macabre. His images are both documentary and surreal, like a gumbo seasoned with splashes of Ken Burns's history and Anne Rice's gothic spookiness. Odd angles capture atmospheric effects of light, shadow, and bizarre reflections."