My work at the Field Museum in Chicago

The curators of "Nature Unleashed" kindly provided me with images of an installation of my work, that is part of their show currently on display at the Field Museum.

Nature Unleashed will be at the Field Museum in Chicago  until January 24 before traveling to six other museums over the coarse of the next two years. Four of my post-Katrina photos are included in the exhibition along with objects I rescued from homes set for demolition. The photos on display are of the objects insitu before I rescued them.

New Orleans Oil Spill Story: A Footnote in the Annals of Oil Spills

On Saturday, August 9th the hull of the sunken barge was recovered from the Mississippi River. I was on location snapping away as the barge's stern dangled in the air. The remaining part of the barge was removed Sunday.

 The process started early in the morning and ended around 1 a.m., an engineering feat that took over two weeks to orchestrate. Oil leaked out of both pieces as they were moved but booms and skimmers were ready to clean the mess as it occurred (unlike when the barge "burped"

 and the clean up crews were unprepared). These images might seem to represent the end of the story, but they don't. Oil is still covering much of the river's , shoreline and animals are still getting sick. I plan to continue moniterring the clean up process until I head to NYC in September, making sure the crews are still on it and haven't been run off before the clean up is done.

In the history of oil spills, the one that polluted New Orleans on July 23rd wasn't a major one. When between 280,000 to 430,000 leaked gallons is defined as a small spill, it should give one pause. Even though this one is "small" it serves as a loud wake up call, reminding us our ecosytem is in danger when oil is transported. I wonder if anyone is listening?
The trail meant to establish whose fault the accident was begun on the 12th of August . The findings won't answer all the questions that still remain: Who will pay for the clean up? And will the river's coast be cleaned up as well as it could be? Which larger companies are the smaller ones subsidiaries of? Who is profiting from the spill: the usual suspects? Will anything be learned by those regulating the transport of oil from this incident or are oil spills just part of doing buisiness?

The best result would be if those involved in the process of transporting oil and those who regulate the waterways took pause and put more safeguards in places to prevent such accidents from occurring in the future -- a highly unlikely outcome since the politicians in New Orleans, LA and in the federal government have given this spill little of no attention.I went out on a boat with the coastguard in Venice at the mouth of the Mississippi the last time I shot the birds being cleaned at the temporary animal rescue center manned by the SPCA out of Houston.

Some oil has gotten into the marshes. I saw none on the booms set up there but the oil did make its way that far. The boat’s captain explained to me where all the coastal erosion has taken place, showing me an artificial opening in the river that is hleping to erode the land. The wetlands don't stand a chance if things keep on as they are. They might already be past the point of viable proection. The road names off Highway 23 say it all. The coast guard dock is just past Halliburton Road. Venice is an oasis for oil producing companies even though Katrina took out the town's infrastructure.

Filmmaker Phin Percy Jr. shot video while I was shooting the clean up work. The crew featured is working for a company called Trident out of Boston. Most of the workers don't speak English. The foreman told me that before the New Orleans spill his crew had been in Iowa cleaning up after the floods a month earlier. They had to remove dead pigs which were bloated after days of being submerged in the water and baking in the sun. Environmental disaster cleaner: now there is a profession that seems one could obtain steady work in.

Oil Spill in New Orleans: approximately 400,000 gallons of it

Yesterday when I learned of the spill I went over to the banks of the Mississippi in the French Quarter and took some pictures. The smell of the fuel oil polluting the air: it's noxious qualities enough  to give me a headache. Not a good day to sit at Café du Monde to sip café au lait and eat beignets .

Close to 1/2-million gallons of  crude oil spilled into the Mississippi River when a 600-foot Liberian flagged tanker called the Tintomara ran into a barge being pulled by a tugboat at 1:30 am.The clean up began yesterday, though it is still not operating on a massive scale as yet. The Mississippi is closed from New Orleans to the Gulf of Mexico (over 100 miles). There are disruptions in the ferry service in the area (for the most part it is completely closed down) and in the water service. Water will have to be trucked in to many of the municipalities. A major traffic pile up has begun on the river.
It was first reported that much of the oil would evaporate, but that isn’t the case. The oil is too thick and if not skimmed off the top of the river, it will sink. A handful of clean up crews were working all through the day yesterday and this morning. They are using a couple different techniques to remove the oil. One is laying out pom-pom like devices tied together along the coast to absorb the oil; another uses a boat that has a belt like apparatus that laps up the oils.

The investigation into the crash has revealed the tugboat operator had only an apprentice mate’s license and wasn’t qualified to be at the wheel. There are also rumors on NOLA’s website, in the comment section, after today’s article on the spill, claiming the operator had been fired for a failed drug test but then allowed back at a lower status. Whatever the case, this is the kind of crime that leaves us all victims. The ecosystem of Louisiana, the wetlands in particular, are fragile and already stressed by industry. New Orleans' first defense against hurricanes has taken another blow. The negative impact this spill will have on the environment is a story in the making.
“Is it a big spill?”, someone at the agency I gave my images to try to syndicate, asked?

“What is considered a big spill these days?” I wonder. It's big.

Flood Street-Still in Ruins From End to End

This morning I rode my bike the length of Flood St. in the Lower 9th Ward, from the wharf on the riverside to the levy. Flood Street is in very bad shape. Little has been rebuilt. I passed only a couple of construction crews and a handful of volunteers who were doing some landscape- 

work. I called a friend to get a reminder of what the codes painted on the homes by rescue crews stand for. 

The number at the 6 o’clock part of the X, is where the number of dead is recorded. Zero, in the case of the turquoise home I photographed. My friend looked up my coordinates on google maps and told me it looks like a sea of blue tarps from above. The scarred landscape and homes with boarded up entry points, illustrates Katrina’s story. A telling hole in a roof of one building looks too deliberate to be wind damage. Someone must have hacked the roof open while escaping the rising water.

 I first visited Flood Street in November 2006. The irony of a street called Flood Street, was one too rich to pass by. 

The Battle Ground Baptist Church, closer to the levee where the water went over the roofs of most of the buildings, is still standing. Benches remain inside, but the mud and other rubbish has been cleaned off.

 

At 1806, I went in to reshoot a home I shot in April 2007. More of the contents have been removed and the lawn was now landscaped, but there are no signs any re-building. In the middle of the house was a picture of Jesus, that is no longer behind glass, as I found it in April, looking back at anyone who enters the empty room looking up at them. The most noticeable change since my last visit in February 2008, are the street signs. At that time most were still hand painted on posts. Now the street intersections sport new shinny signs marking Flood Street and its’ recovery.

Bike ride down Desire St.

On Wednesday I rode my bike the length of Desire Street stopping to take pictures along the way. Club Desire, at the corner of Law Street, is in a state of ruin, just as I found it in November 2006. 

There are new signs of life across the street from the club; a crew of volunteers is rebuilding a row of homes. Also new, is a housing development at the end of Desire St, a fenced in community of new homes with fresh perfect lawns, lacking any of New Orleans’ authentic style. The generic bland homes making up the complex could be found in any suburban community elsewhere in America; a bittersweet sign of progress in the Post Katrina rebuilding process.

I got off my bike and chatted with a resident who is happy with the housing development.

Desire Street tells the story of a city on the mend. However, block-by-block one could come up with different interpretations of the same story.

No faded Mardi Gras beads decorating the new housing complex yet, but in a few years I suspect one will find them there as well.

The first picture I shot that day, where Desire Street begins, is of a swan sculpture with a cracked neck adorned with faded Mardi Gras beads. 

Next a graveyard, where when I accompanied the National Guard on their patrols witnessed many drug dealer being picked up. 

Posted here is an image of one of the many ruined houses still standing and a couple of  the destroyed markets with hand-painted sings.

Elysian Fields : New Orleans

At the end of the day I rode my bike the length of Elysian Fields. From the river to the lake. Blanche DuBois moved into her sister's place on Elysian Field only to be taken off to a mental institution by the end of Tennessee William’s a Street Car Named Desire, “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers", she said to the man who let her leave the premises without having to be put in a straight jacket. Much of Elysian Fields was flooded badly. Signs of Katrina’s wrath start as early as North Rampart and get progressively more intense as you approach the lake.On the ride back, I stopped at a red light where Elysian Fields intersects Humanity Street, took a picture and rode on.

Based in New Orleans for the summer of 2008

I have returned to New Orleans to spend the summer, arriving on the 4th of July in time to catch the fireworks over the Mississippi River. I’m staying in an apartment over a bakery in the Faubourg Treme. An area that wasn’t hit too badly by the storm. I will photograph how things have changed since Katrina, and document the 3rd anniversary of the storm on Aug 29th at the end of the summer, while carrying on with my project at Tulane’s Natural History Museum.

On my way here I stopped in Washington DC and was able to go behind the scenes in the Smithsonian.

 

Ann Juneau, a librarian at the Natural History Museum escorted me through the back rooms and introduced me to some of the staff. That museum has the biggest collection in the world. There are row after row of storage cases; it is mind-boggling. James Dean, in the bird department pulled out a couple of Auks forme to shoot.  The bird hall in the public museum area is in the process of being replaced by an ocean hall, so not many birds are left on display. I will return in September on my way back to NYC, and start a series on deep-sea coral specimens.
I also went to the Vietnam memorial to shoot, adding that site to my project on Dark Tourism. It is very moving to watch people who locate the names of those they lost on the wall. People do rubbings of the names of the deceased to take away as mementoes. 

It is one of the most successful memorials I have visited. Nothing kitsch or over sentimental about it. The memorial has a great sense of dignity and evokes a tragic sense of loss through its’ endless sea of names.

David Borden met me there and modeled for me despite the sun shining in his eyes. He runs an advocacy group fighting for social justice by way of trying to change the drug laws – called, Stop the Drug Wars Now.

My next stop was Montgomery, Alabama (driving a long stretch of road to get there– a good 13.5 hour drive from DC) to visit my friend Sue Jensen, who is a superb ceramic artist as well as a professor.

 

Before I headed out of town, we went to the Civil Rights Memorial so I could shoot another one of Maya Lin’s works.

 Unfortunately the fountain 

(an integral part of the memorial) wasn’t on. The guard told us people keep throwing coins in the fountain that lead to it breaking down. Even without the fountain running, the memorial had

 great resonance. 

It is located in Montgomery’s historic downtown, where a lot of old buildings are still standing; the place hasn’t been turned into a generic shopping 

mall quite yet.
The quote used in the memorial is one of the most poetic of Martin Luther King Jr's:. “….. Until justice rolls down like waters and the righteousness like a mighty stream”.

 The absence of the sound of running water served as an ironic reminder that justice is something that sometimes needs maintenance too.

My first full day in New Orleans, I wasn’t too ambitious, but I did stop my car to shoot a spot I shot over a year ago since the light fell on the sign much nicer this time around. The same couch, the same open door- the same closed car wash remain on the corner of Freret and Soniat Street.