REVEL & REVOLT - Beau Patrick Coulon

Revel & Revolt is a new photo book by Beau Patrick Coulon, a co-edition with Burn Barrel Press and Defend New Orleans' imprint: DNO books. Coulon presents his straightforward-yet-personal visual documentation of protests, parades, and the punk scene in New Orleans from 2013 to 2020.

Beau Patrick Coulon is a New Orleans-based documentary photographer and filmmaker whose imagery is informed by class struggle and subcultural movements.

Born in Hollywood under the shadow of the 101 Freeway, he is the eighth of ten siblings, and he spent much of his childhood bouncing back and forth between divorced parents in California, Florida, and Oklahoma. At 13, he moved out of his mom's apartment to live on the streets with punks he met on Hollywood Blvd while skipping school.

As an unhoused juvenile, Coulon traveled by freight train across the country along with a network of derelict squats, punk houses, collectives, and DIY art spaces. Sometimes he'd return to Oklahoma for a season to flip burgers in his dad's cafe or Oakland to spend time with one of his brothers. He first arrived in New Orleans in the mid-90s and eventually found work in the service industry and painting houses. Coulon also worked seasonally pouring concrete in Montana, as a farmhand in Washington, harvesting sugar beets in Minnesota, bookbinding in SF, as a line cook in Cincinnati, barbacking in Portland, doing demolition in NYC, and framing art in Tampa Bay. Through these experiences, he developed a perspective informed by decades of working-class struggle and nomadic living.