In the late 1950s, Jerry Tisserand roamed from Barcelona to Paris to Kentucky to New Orleans, keeping his camera close at hand. With the goal of taking photographs that “no one else has taken,” Tisserand captured, over a four-year period, a series of unique and vibrant scenes of everyday life: ancient cobblestone vistas, hidden backcountry roads, classic cars, young love, and brilliant revelers at Mardi Gras.
Then one day, he stopped as abruptly as he started. He put away both his camera and his photographs, never to return to them.
Sixty years later, sheltered in place during the COVID pandemic, award-winning author Michael Tisserand (Krazy, The Kingdom of Zydeco, Sugarcane Academy) pulled out a dusty box of forgotten family mementos. Inside, among other things, he found two grey steel cases, each containing tidy rows of Kodachrome slides, most of them unmarked. He pulled a few at random and held them, one at a time, to the light.
At first, he didn’t understand what he was seeing. Here was the work of a photographer with a curious eye and a unique perspective. An artist.
Then he realized the photos had been taken by someone he never knew—his father when he was young.
For fans of both photography and Southern culture, and for anyone who has pondered that nagging question: What did my parents do before I was born?
Praise for My Father When Young
“If Robert Frank and Diane Arbus had a kid brother, and they set him up with a little camera and all the rolls of film he wanted, the result might be a lot like My Father When Young.”— Ben Yagoda, author of About Town: The New Yorker and the World It Made
“A wonderful family story. These images are equally remarkable from a photographic standpoint. I wish he had continued.” — Douglas Baz, Photographer, Cajun Document: Acadiana, 1973—74
“Imagine finding all this from your dad. Or even someone else’s.” — Roy Blount Jr.
About the Photographer
Jerry Tisserand (1931 – 2008) was a lifelong resident of Evansville, Indiana. In 1955, he purchased his first camera when stationed overseas in the Army. He continued to photograph for the next four years, then put his camera away for good. After working numerous sales jobs, he became a stockbroker in 1968 and retired from that profession in 1997. Tisserand “has a way of selecting winners before they reach the winner’s circle,” the Evansville Pressreported in 1986. This is his first book.
About the Editor
Michael Tisserand is a New Orleans-based author whose most recent book, Krazy: George Herriman, a Life in Black and White, received the Eisner Award and was named a New York Times notable book. His previous books include The Kingdom of Zydeco, which received the ASCAP-Deems Taylor award for music writing, and the Hurricane Katrina memoir Sugarcane Academy. More information about Tisserand and his work can be found at MichaelTisserand.com.
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