The fifth anniversary of Katina is approaching, so this blog will devote some days to Katrina related posts. I sat out Katrina in Baton Rouge, where we got some damage, but where Rita was the more dangerous storm. LSU was a major staging area for the relief for the storm so there were months of storm related activity here. The LSU Law Center took in about 180 students from Loyola and Tulane – my adlaw class went from 40 t0 80. Many stayed with us for the year, many went on to other schools and school-in-exile programs.
I stayed out of New Orleans and the disaster area for a month, not wanting to get in the way of the relief efforts, then I began photographing the damage with a 4×5 film camera. I drove and walked the entire course of the storm from Grande Isle, LA to Waveland MS, taking photographs of the damage to the infrastructure. I have repeated this trek several times, mapping the rebuilding and the abandonment. I have a few of these images on the WWW:
This project morphed into what I call my Before Pictures Project. There were so many areas that I wished that I had seen before they washed away, I decided to start photographing the towns and churches and cultural events of Southern Louisiana that are in danger of washing away as the coast sinks, the ocean rises, and the storms keep coming. Some of these are posted here (warning – the Boucherie is a ritual pig slaughter and not for the faint of heart).