Louisiana Recovery: Shooting a Slow Miracle

[nosmokes]

I have a niece in NOLA. They're throwing money at the problem and it's sorta like Iraq.Lots of suits and photo ops and ground breaking ceremonies forDisneyfication projects that no one really wants and that are being railroaded through neighborhoods over the objections of the few residents around to complain but nothing of substance is getting done. some of the old projects and low income housing that people wanna move back into is still being ripped down when it's in no worse shape than a lot of the upscale housing that's being rehabbed.So of course, once again it's the poor that are taking the brunt of the hit.
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original-dailyyonder.com

Louisiana Recovery: Shooting a Slow Miracle
12/05/2007


"Katrina done the top" ... "Rita done the bottom." Photographer Shawn Poynter brings back a chronicle of slow recovery as, two years after two hurricanes, Louisiana's coastal towns stumble to stand again.

By Shawn Poynter

The state of Louisiana is spending its disaster relief money much faster than nearby states that also got slammed by hurricanes in the 2005 season. But it's hard to chart Louisiana's progress with the human eye.

More than two years have passed since Katrina and Rita hit the Gulf Coast. The pace of recovery has been painfully slow for an outsider to watch. And I know I've only glimpsed what it's been like for the people who actually live there.

I work for the Center for Rural Strategies, which publishes the Daily Yonder. Since 2005 I've been to the Gulf Coast four times to document hurricane damage and the efforts of people there to rebuild their lives. My work is part of Rural Strategies' hurricane recovery project, which is tracking the Gulf Coast to see what's happening -- and what isn't -- in the small communities that took the brunt of Katrina and Rita in 2005.
From the images I've shot over nearly two years of visiting the region, I've assembled a brief slideshow. The music is by Dirk Powell, part of the musical Balfa family of southern Louisiana.

Capturing the scale of the destruction and recovery on the Gulf Coast has been difficult. It's hard to shoot things that aren't there; there's no way to compare before and after.

One example: Holly Beach, Louisiana. In the opening frames of the slide show, it looks like a barren sand flat. Aside from utility poles and random debris like a set of stairs leading nowhere, there's no sign that it was actually a neighborhood of 300 homes. All 300 were washed away by Hurricane Rita in September 2005.

Nothing in my news photography career prepared me for what I found in Louisiana. Not the wildfires I shot in New Mexico or tornadoes in Kentucky and Michigan. Those were swaths of disaster. Rita and Katrina are biblical in proportion. In Cameron Parish, the location of Holly Beach, I drove for an hour without seeing one structure that wasn't either gutted or demolished. And this was four months after the hurricane.

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complete article here

[TomInTib]

1. That slideshow punched a hole in my soul.

Beautiful work topped by a haunting track.

KnR

[nosmokes]

2. yeah, it's gut knotter f'sure.

[Richard Steele]

3. recommended

[Selatius]

4. That slideshow pisses me off.

I live down there on the Mississippi coast. Much of the reconstruction money has been wasted on graft and corruption. I just get pissed when thinking about the vultures that came and of the incompetence of the authorities involved.

If FDR were still president, there'd be a WPA-style program using local help to rebuild everything. He probably could've had a quarter of the damage undone after year two. As it stands, it feels like it will be decades before things are done.

[nosmokes]

5. Yes, it's an outrage. Iunderstand there are still sections of NOLA lacking

basic services like electric and water. Not to even mention the fact that we're spending millions on the levees to put them back up w/ the same problems they had before. No wonder Baghdad is so fecked up it may never recover, but Halliburton and KBR and the rest, many of the same names you'll find in New Orleans,are posting record profits while not delivering anything. Nice work if you can get it, huh? A salary that makes Wall Street take notice and you don't haafta deliver on anything.

[nosmokes]

6. I hate bumping my own post, but this slideshow needs more coverage.

it truly does.