As I walk around the city, I often find myself stopping to stare, jaw dropped, at the play of shadow and light on architectural fabric. There’s something about sunlight stretching across brick, or living out its last moments, splayed across a graffiti tag. In New Orleans, where many buildings are a century or two old, it’s easy to wonder how many times this precise combination of light and shadow has happened, and who was the last to notice. In a city like this, sometimes the brick and plaster seem timeless, infinite, even in their decrepitude.