New Orleans is often hailed for its distinctive Creole heritage—evident in its food, architecture, and people—but it is far from alone. Its Creoleness may be unique to the United States, but New Orleans is part of an entire family of Latin Caribbean cities with similar colonial histories. Founded as New World outposts of Old World empires, these cities forged new identities from their European, West African, and Indigenous influences—by turns inspired by, in defiance of, and adapted from all of them.

Photographer Richard Sexton has been intrigued by this cultural phenomenon since he first traveled to Central and South America as a young man. For him, the architectural and urban similarities among Creole cities compose a visual theme supported by endless variations both grand and humble, old and new, carefully curated and wonderfully slapdash. With more than 200 stunning full-color photographs of Cuba, Ecuador, Argentina, Bolivia, and Haiti, as well as New Orleans, Sexton gives readers a taste of everything the Creole world has to offer.

Setting the stage for Sexton’s images are essays by Creole-architecture scholar Jay D. Edwards and photography historian John H. Lawrence. Together, they take readers on a fascinating journey across time and place, through the ever-changing Creole world.