Pableaux Johnson, a New Orleans food writer, a photographer and cook who spreads the community gospel, serving red beans and rice cups to thousands of people and documenting the unique Mardi Gras traditions of the city, died there on Sunday. He was 59 years old.
Mr Johnson’s sister, Charlotte Aaron, said she photographed a second-line parade-something she did often-when she had a heart attack and could not revive the hospital.
Mr Johnson moved to New Orleans in 2001 and quickly became what the local chef Frank Brigtsen is called a “happy accessory” in the city.
“He hugged New Orleans and hugged him back because he was so authentic,” Mr Brigtsen said in an interview.
Many friendships by Mr Johnson – essentially everyone who met – started over a bowl of red beans and rice, a traditional Monday meal in New Orleans. He was looking for it every week, initially for a small group of friends, but soon for pilgrims from all over the country who loved the city’s food and culture.
The rotating group of visitors can include not only local musicians, famous chefs and journalists who visit but also a neighbor who needed a meal or a friend with a broken heart.
Phones are not allowed and the menu never varies with red beans and rice and corn, with dessert whiskey. The panel was placed with a roll of napkins and a bunch of spoons. Visitors could bring something to drink but never food.
The restrictions were partly to adhere to the simplicity of a meal that traditionally took place on Monday, because the city’s cooks were busy with a washing machine. The extra dishes will make the whole thing very complicated. Mr Johnson would prefer to focus on the discussion.
“One of the things that is important to this table is that it was not the table at my grandmother’s house. It was the kitchen table,” Mr Johnson said in 2017 on the public radio show “The Splendid Table”. “The fancy dining table was not used every day, but he did. That was where all the power was.”
Dinners became an important bridge between cultures in the city, said Jessica Harris, a scholar of African diaspora dietary living in New Orleans and was a regular visitor.
“There are so few places in New Orleans where black and white are socialized at home,” Dr. Harris said. “The joy was that the table became a way to create the community and that the community was the one that needed a lot in New Orleans, where there is a strange social apartheid.”
In some cases, visitors will include members of historical social assistance and pleasure associations of the city, who had formed as black -in -laws to gather resources to cover health care and funerals.
On most Sundays, one of the 40 clubs hosts an elaborate four -way parade known as a second line, wearing clothes they bought for the occasion and dancing to the sounds of a brass band.
Their costumes, music and customs were a charm for Mr Johnson, who became a regular presence, wearing Johnny Cash Black with a camera that fell over his shoulder. Pictures of the elaborately dressed black Indians, known as Indians Mardi Gras – a slice of the city’s community traditions created as a way to honor the natives who helped those who had escaped slavery survived in Louisiana Wilderness, were also captured.
Indians Mardi Gras can be suspicious of strangers and do not let many photographers approach, said Freddye Hill, a retired college dean and a documentary photographer who was with Mr Johnson in his last moments, to the ladies and the men of Unity Second Line.
“People trusted him because they didn’t sell their photos,” he said in an interview. “They respected his work and knew that if he needed something from him, they could call.”
When one of this community died, Mr Johnson will appear at the funeral with an expanded portrait of the person for the family.
In 2016, he created two documentaries on the culture of black Indians: “The Spirit leads my needle: the great Carnival leaders” and “is your glory: the great queens of the carnival”. Some of his images were presented in galleries and museums across the country.
The nights for dying people, also called monuments processions, are usually intended for members of the club, musicians or Indian covers. But someone was organized for Mr Johnson on Monday, and many more are going to come this week.
“To get this kind of treatment at night after passing? This is the spine,” said Katy Reckdahl, a journalist and friend of Mr. Johnson. “This tells you that it was an integral part of the city’s cultural community.”
Paul Michael Johnson was born on January 8, 1966 in Trenton, NJ, Carmelite Hebert Blanco and Philip Johnson. By the time he was 7 years old, his parents had divorced and his mother, who had grown up in the Baton Rouge, transported Paul and his two sisters to Nea Iberia, La, about 130 miles west of New Orleans. In 1988, he graduated from Trinity University in San Antonio, where he studied History, Religion and Sociology.
His friendships with people in the Latino community of the city have helped to change his name to Pableaux-Pablo is the Spanish word for Paul and “-eaux” honoring the French roots of Cajun.
After bounce between San Francisco, Europe and Oxford, Miss, landed in Austin, Texas, where he worked as an independent food author for publications, including the New York Times and began throwing gumbo parties that grew up in more than 100 visitors .
He later returned to New Orleans Monday’s dinners on the Red Beans Roadshow, packing his car with ingredients and working with chefs in dozens of cities to recreate what he was doing at home.
During the holidays it will store cheap turkeys in a freezer, which will be converted into gumbo gallons, winning the nickname Gumbo Claus.
He made pleasure familiar portraits of most people he met, disarming issues with a joke or saying, “Think about me as your cajun grandmother with a beard.” Many parents said his photos of their children were the best they had ever seen.
He wrote four books, including a food guide to New Orleans published shortly before Hurricane Katrina. It was named one of the top 100 cooks in America on the Epicurious website, and was the first phone of many food journalists when they were traveling or writing to Louisiana.
In addition to Charlotte’s sister, she survives another sister, Elaine Johnson. One half brother, Tony Blanco. And his steps, Joe Blanco, Felicia Searcy and Paul Blanco. His marriage to French Ariana ended with a divorce in 2006.
He would also say that he survives his “people” – the countless friends he made for decades.
Dr. Harris was one of them.
“He would say and say,” I just control my people. How are you doing? ”” He said. “People don’t do it anymore, just pick up the phone. But Pableaux did. ”
