ROY FERDINAND
Roy Ferdinand (1959-2004) chronicled life on some of New Orleans’s toughest backstreets in the years before Hurricane Katrina, creating an epic body of work scattered among private collections, galleries, and museums across the country.
Ferdinand, who died at age 45, often addressed such large issues as gun violence and crime, income inequality, drugs and the war on drugs, and New Orleans’ often astonishing murder rate, employing a style he called “urban realism.” Mixing social criticism with the exaggerated, self-aggrandizing style of rap, he compared himself to a battle!eld sketch artist and drew on events he saw !rsthand, heard about, or read in the pages of the local newspaper.
Drawn on poster board with drug store art materials—ink markers, colored pencils, and children’s water colors—his best work o"ers compositionally sophisticated, realist portraits of New Orleans’ distinct African American neighborhoods. His huge body of work—some 2,000 drawings all together—are a singular vision of New Orleans at the turn of the 21st Century.