Dear photographers and photo lovers alike—welcome to the 13th annual ANTIGRAVITY Photo Issue! It’s hot, y’all, and as I sit and type this, Tropical Storm Bertha is blowing outside my window. August is a weird month to be a New Orleanian—trying to think through the heat while keeping one eye on hurricane forecasts and hoping this isn’t the season we take a beating. As a parent, I love/hate August because as much as I want summer to be over and to get back to a routine, I am sad to hand my kid over to the public school system for eight hours a day. We just got back from our family vacation—we visited the Grand Canyon, Route 66, and Sedona, Arizona, and along the way shot a variety of rolls of film. My favorite part of vacation is taking the family snaps, leaving the digitals at home, and enjoying the simplicity of not too much gear. As a working photographer, it is nice to unstrap all the heavy equipment now and then. We packed two Canon EOS-1s, outfitted them with 28mm and 50mm lenses, and set about our adventures. Fun fact: Our co-EIC Dan Fox (my hubs) is a shutterbug himself and one of my favorite New Orleans photographers. It was a thrilling trip and even more thrilling when our five-year-old grabbed for a camera and started learning to shoot. He wanted to see the images pop up on the back of the camera so badly, so it was a good lesson in patience and delayed gratification for him.
We’re home now, and our film is making its way through the lab at Bennett’s Photo on Severn, where AG co-EIC Marisa Clogher and photo contributor Tammie Quintana are helping process our rolls. It’s another reminder that New Orleans is the smallest big city in the world.
As summer comes to a close, I am happy to introduce this year’s Photo Issue. Inside these pages is an incredible collection of people, places, and moments captured on everything from disposable film cameras to professional digital rigs. These images represent the very best of our AG photography team over the past year, and I’m thrilled to be in their company.
Every year around this time, I am reminded just how vibrant and photogenic our great city of New Orleans is. Despite what our overlords in Baton Rouge may say, we are the heartbeat of Louisiana, and the following pages are proof that we don’t just “think” we are special—we know it. Our AG photographers know it too, and year after year they commit to capturing it in their own style.
I hope you take a reprieve from the August heat, settle into your favorite coffee shop, and enjoy this amazing Photo Issue. And last but not least—you are cordially invited to our inaugural Photo Expo on Saturday, August 8 at the Marigny Opera House! (see ad opposite page.) This will be a market-style photography event, so come by and peruse some prints, buy-sell-or-swap some gear, get a portrait taken, and chat with some of New Orleans’ finest photographers and photography institutions. Bonus: You’ll also be supporting ANTIGRAVITY and the future of print media! —Adrienne Battistella
Top photo by Teddy Fox
Bottom photo by Adrienne Battistella
About the Cover
Kevin Cortez, guitarist and lead vocalist for Code Black, performs at Republic NOLA on November 1, 2025. They were set to open for Peelander-Z alongside New Orleans pop-punk band Kawaii AF that night before Peelander-Z dropped out. The openers still played a free show which morphed into a late Halloween celebration. The damaged guitar came from a previous Code Black show at Parisite Skatepark, where Cortez smashed it and had bandmates and showgoers carve into and sign the guitar with markers. They later gave it away at the Republic show to a fan. One of my favorite parts of photography is capturing little moments and then wondering, “What led up to this happening?” This shot and the guitar’s story felt demonstrative of Cortez’s showmanship as a frontman as well as Code Black’s emphasis on crowd engagement during their shows. It was taken on a Nikon D750, f/2.8, 28mm, 1/320, ISO 6400. —Dalton Spangler
