A collection of 45 black and white photographs, depicting the decadence, merriment, and often uninhibited human nature wrought by Mardi Gras over a 30-year span since the 1950s, is featured in an exhibit through March 23 at Barnard Observatory, home to the Center.

   The work of Biloxi-born photographer Lyle Bongé, the images first appeared in his 1974 book The Sleep of Reason (Jargon Press), which quickly became a national cult favorite one year after its release. The haunting pictures, including dozens that capture both local and out-of-town revelers donning various masks, costumes, and artificial body parts, expose outrageous sights seen on French Quarter streets the last day before Ash Wednesday.    

   Melancholy clowns drinking beer and strangers peering at the camera through bizarre or freakish masks are among the odd assortment of snapshots taken during the festive period.  Knowing Mardi Gras had been the subject of myriad amateur and promotional shoots, Bongé, whose work has been described as “the opposite of the slice of life,” clutched two cameras, including a 35mm Nikkor wide-angle lens, and in 1955 headed to New Orleans in pursuit of capturing extraordinary moments. With Mardi Gras in full swing in the Louisiana city, which he called “a fine, hot, decadent, rather depraved place,” Bongé arrived armed with “an itchy eye.”

   “I set out to capture that moment when people let you see who they are,”Bongé recently told an audience at a Center‑sponsored brown bag lecture at Barnard Observatory. “It’s the only time you see this open, rather terrified state.”        

   “Shooting film in the French Quarter, 1964 was best for me,” Bongé said in his book.   “Photographers were few and ignorant of what they saw,” said Bongé, whose work has been featured in photography exhibits and is showcased in collections around the country. “The streets were thick with people and the participants outnumbered the gawkers.”

   Susan Lloyd McClamroch, Barnard Observatory curator, said Bongé’s photos rekindle her own memories of the shocking and sometimes sad sights, sounds, and smells that visitors to Mardi Gras encounter. “His photographs clearly, honestly, and truly record some of the monsters that are produced while reason--drunkenly--slumbers,” she said. “What the gallery has to offer our viewing visitors is anything but your typical carnival ‘festive-all’ portrayal of Mardi Gras. Lyle Bongé prefers to capture individual participation in, or reaction to, the mass masking.”

   Both the exhibition and the book include a foreword written by poet and publisher Jonathan Williams as well as excerpts of writer James Leo Herlihy’s interview with Bongé. Herlihy was Bongé’s roommate when both attended Black Mountain College in North Carolina in the late1940s.        

   Bongé, who began his career in photography in Biloxi after serving two years in the Korean War, said he has amassed as many as 40,000 negatives from shooting Mardi Gras pictures since 1955. His photographic works can be found in such permanent collections as the Mississippi Museum of Fine Art, the George Eastman House, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, the Pensacola Art Museum, and the Historic New Orleans Collection.  In addition, Bongé is creating art as a metal sculptor. Some of his hulking sculptures have been exhibited at Loyola University in New Orleans and the George Ohr Museum in Biloxi. He also has built boats, renovated houses, and been a bank director, investor, and  tree-topper.     

    “The Center is currently treated to images of humor and horror captured by Bongé’s crafty camera,” McClamroch said.