Remembering Greg Miles

Aurora Nealand, by Greg Miles

The photographer who was an indispensable part of our Jazz Fest coverage passed away this week.

I’m still stunned to learn that photographer Greg Miles died this week. I’ve been a fan of his work since he shot a yearly gallery of New Orleans’ jazz artists for New Orleans and loved the portraits he did for My Spilt Milk during Jazz Fest. I’ve tried to reuse them when some of those artists perform because they represent the artists and Greg so well. This year I posted a story collecting the shots he did for us, and now I’m glad I did this and got a chance to express my affection for Greg’s work while he could enjoy it.

Greg should have been better known than he was, but he might have been a little out of step with New Orleans. His images brought style, glamor, and often sexiness to a music community that has traditionally emphasized grit. Everybody looked like a star in Greg’s photos, and that’s the way many of his subjects felt when he shot them as well. A number of the subjects of his portraits for us told me that they loved the way he treated them.

People Museum, by Greg Miles

My favorite Greg story was when he shot the cover photo of Fats Domino for the January 2007 issue of OffBeat, which I edited at the time. Fats was professionally elusive at that point, and we’d been told that if he knew we were looking for him, he’d duck us. At the same time, he was having memory issues and if told he agreed to the photo shoot, he’d go with it. With that in mind, we had Greg set up to shoot him on the porch of his house on a day when he was out with friends running errands. While Greg was setting up, the friends called to say that plans had changed and Fats wanted to go to Tipitina’s. We called Greg and he bolted from Caffin Avenue in the Lower Ninth Ward to Tipitina’s and got set up so quickly that when Fats got there, we could continue the plan and get the photos.

Fats wasn’t sure about anything until Greg asked him if he could look over here and motioned to his camera. Fats turned on his charisma immediately and he worked immediately and spontaneously with Greg, giving him great look after great look. Greg noticed that Fats periodically looked down at a briefcase at his feet and moved to get it out of the way. Greg took a step toward it and said, “I’ll just put that over here,” but Fats made it clear he wasn’t to touch it, giving us all reasons to wonder what was in his briefcase. When Greg started to shoot again, Fats smiled and connected with his camera as if nothing had happened, and I’m convinced that Greg’s cover photo of Fats emotionally landed with so many people who needed to see Domino reassure them that he and New Orleans were going to okay.

I also admired Greg’s artistic courage. The next year, we asked Greg to shoot Wardell Quezergue, who was OffBeat’s Best of the Beat honoree in 2009. Those photos were controversial as some loved the way they presented the physical reality of a blind, aging man presenting himself proudly, while others worried that presenting Quezergue as less than conventionally distinguished was disrespectful. I was in the first camp and loved that we got to see the real Wardell—who was a very real guy in my brief experiences with him—but I understood those who wanted a celebratory photo to look more celebratory.

I loved those photos and all the work he did for My Spilt Milk. You can see the range of his imagination and creativity in the photos he did for us, but there’s also a clear through line that connects them. The outlier is his portrait of 79ers Gang, with whom he a communication breakdown. He got what he could, and the shot of the two of them looking hard on a couch captured a Mardi Gras Indian truth as essential as the fantasy of them in full finery.

I made a point to never tell him what I wanted, in part because I don’t believe in telling talented people what to do. I never wanted the limits of my photographic imagination to limit him, which meant I always looked forward to seeing what he sent me. I never knew what was coming, and some blew me away. This year, his portraits of Corina Hernandez of Los Güiros knocked me out with her floral, regal presentation. On a selfish level, I’m saddened that I’m not going to have that moment of blown away surprise from him again, but on this Thanksgiving day, I’m thankful that I got it as many times as I did.

Services for Greg Miles will take place November 30 at 10 a.m. at Celebration Church: 2001 Airline Dr, Metairie, LA 70001.