Spread the Love

We asked New Orleans to clean out its closets. Two days before Valentine's Day, people brought their old clothes to the shore of Bayou St. John, we sorted them by colour and laid them out in a heart, and everyone who came got their picture taken standing in the middle of it.

We started with three bags of clothing and ended with eleven 60-gallon bags. The heart grew all afternoon as more arrived — a white centre first, then rings of pink, red, black and blue. When the light went, the clothes were packed up and given to shelters around the city.

The pictures were posted the same week, free for anyone to download, print, and send to their Valentine. They still are — every one of them is below.

The day, picture by picture photographs

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Drag along the line to watch the heart grow. Click the picture to step forward, or use ← →. If you're in one of these, it's yours — download it.

The invitation

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The video we sent around the week before — the pitch, the plan, and a map at the end. The Mid-City Neighborhood Organization passed it along, and so did Neighborland.

Making it

The heart was stencilled onto shirts and flyers first; the camera sat on top of a ladder, on an intervalometer running Magic Lantern's T2i hack, firing every few seconds all afternoon. The time-lapse is those frames; the portraits are the ones where somebody was standing in the middle.