Raised in New Orleans, John Tibule Mendes lived most of his life in a two-room house on Broad Street with his beloved mother and their dogs. Only after his death in 1965 was it discovered that this lonely and socially awkward man had spent most of his free time documenting beautiful and unusual scenes of early 20th century New Orleans. His glassplate negatives, discovered after his death in the attic of his house and published here for the first time, captured subjects typically ignored by the photographers of the era: transvestites, demolition of historic buildings, working class children playing in their yards, the mean streets of New Orleans. His photographs are exceptional from both documentary and aesthetic perspectives, presenting what could accurately be classified as photographic folk art. The collection is complimented by excerpts from his self-published autobiography, Dogs in My Life, which add Mendes' sometimes tragic, sometimes hilarious, voice to the remarkable images.