On  March 22nd of this year, I flew to New Orleans for a press conference in St. Bernard Parish. The trip down was uneventful, I got my rental car and was quickly on my way. Off the highway, the first neighborhood I drove through wasn’t in that bad shape. There seemed to be groups of people busily cleaning and rebuilding houses and I felt heartened at this hopeful activity. Piles of debris from all this work dotted the street as I made my way along. Then the road swung onto a bridge that crossed what, I guessed, was one of New Orlean’s famous canals. Up to this point I’d been the cool, detached, and analytical observer.

But as I came down the other side of the bridge my control vanished like a leaf in a gale. As I gazed out at the war zone that I was descending into, tears brimmed my eyes and streamed down my cheeks. I had never seen such utter decimation. Sure, I’d watched accounts on TV and in the papers I’d read the horror stories that over time had beat a slow and steady retreat to the back pages, away from America’s attention-deficit gaze. But here it was, almost 6 months, SIX MONTHS since a storm named Katrina had her way with this city and its people. It looked as if it had hit yesterday.

At the bottom of the bridge the corner of a house poked into the road having been shoved there by two others piggybacked on one corner. There was a metal roof twisted into a tree, not touched since Katrina unceremoniously dumped it there. Traffic lights dangled at weird angles by the frayed wire that once powered them. No electricity here. In places an end of a car stuck out from a pile of storm-tossed debris. I did see one house that looked like it was being worked on, rolls of tar paper on a roof with a ladder leaned against. I was dumbfounded by the fragile nature of the world in which the impoverished of this nation are forced to exist, just one natural disaster from total devastation. I thought who am I to be in this place of sadness with a camera?

My destination was a Walmart. Cynicism had gotten the best of me thinking that here was corporate America cashing in on the misfortunes of these folks. But the big store was not open. How could it be with no electricity? The parking lot had been converted into a storm relief headquarters. Temporary buildings housed various departments of assistance. Tucked into a far corner of the parking lot was the “Katrina Cottage” that I’d come to photograph. The press conference I’d come down for was the unveiling of this, the second of the Katrina Cottages. designed to be built quickly and inexpensively in lieu of the emergency trailers. Katrina Cottages are seed houses that can be built for about the same price as the disposable trailers that formed the Katrina refugee camp across the street. I got there as a small army of volunteers worked feverishly to finish the building. The press conference went well, although I wished it had been better attended.

I photographed the Cottage and the conference as a cool rain shower swept in. The next morning I came out hoping to get more shots, but the damp weather persisted. I pulled over on my way out of St. Bernard Parish and snapped the hasty pictures that you see here. Part of me wanted to drop everything and help these folks in their plight. Another part of me wanted to stay for a week or a month with my camera and record the devastation of this orphaned land. In the end politics, egos and the slow grind of government bureaucracy have hindered the acceptance and implementation of the Katrina Cottages. For my part I’ve tried not to ignore those back pages, and at the very least keep these people in the foreground of my thoughts and prayers.
R.A.O.