IT ALL STARTED WITH VICKY WEST

In 1978, Mariette and her husband Ken went to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. One morning Mariette was enjoying breakfast by the pool when she saw a very glamorous group. They were head to toe in full make-up, evening gowns, big wigs, and bulky jewelry. Intrigued by them Mariette remembers... “I didn’t have a word for it at the time, but I hadn’t seen people quite like them before,”... “I just thought, these are amazing-looking people.” Seeing them start to line up for each other's photo's, Mariette asked to take one too as she always had a camera on hand. She recalls them being distracted and giddy when she put her eye to the view finder. Trying to still capture the shot there was one person staring straight back into Mariette's lens.“I had an astonishing feeling,” Mariette says. “I felt like I wasn’t looking at a man or a woman, but somehow at the essence of a human being. I said to myself, ‘I have to have this person in my life.” And that's how MPA met Vicky West. Vicky turned out to live twenty blocks away from her in Manhattan. “And it was through meeting Vicky West,” MPA says, “that I entered this whole world.”