The past is not a peaceful landscape lying there behind me, a country in which I can stroll wherever I please, and will gradually show me all its secret hills and dales. As I was moving forward, so it was crumbling. Most of the wreckage that can be seen is colourless, distorted, frozen: its meaning escapes me … all that’s left is a skeleton. I shall never find my plans again, my hopes and fears – I shall not find myself.

- Albert Camus

I have to believe in a world outside my own mind. I have to believe that my actions still have meaning, even if I can’t remember them. I have to believe that when my eyes are closed, the world’s still there. Do I believe the world’s still there? Is it still out there? … Yeah. We all need mirrors to remind ourselves who we are.

- Memento (2000)

Artist and sign painter Lester Carey stands in front of a freshly repainted advertisement for the Magnolia Supermarket on Jackson Avenue in Central City, New Orleans, June, 2009. Carey, a native New Orleanian and veteran who has been homeless since Hurricane Katrina, began sign painting in 1982, and his signature style can be seen on a wide range of local businesses throughout the Crescent City.

for more, read: The story of a New Orleans sign-painter: Artist Lester Carey