Photographer’s Images of Hurricane Katrina Aftermath Still Shock 20 Years Later

The entire Lower Ninth was flooded to the point where it lifted houses from their foundations and pushed them onto one another, precisely the same way a push broom just shoves everything against a wall. You wouldnʼt think something the size of a four-bedroom house could move like that, not to mention, stack like that. Cars were still upside down and resting on the tops of trees like mangled metal pterodactyl nests. An 18-wheeler was turned on its side in the front yard of what used to be someoneʼs home with photo albums covering the ground around it. The most disturbing part of it all was the solitude. I was completely alone in this neighborhood that obviously was once full of life, full of living. No cats, dogs, birds, nothing. The trees, or what remained of them, looked like a giant had pulled and stripped them of all foliage, snapping branches, power lines, telephone poles and everything else from the ground. At first I felt wrong for being there, like I was trespassing and trampling upon the lives and memories of others who had already experienced so much horror. I eventually came to realize that this neighborhood looked the way it did, still, after eight months, because no one who had the power to do anything really gave a s***. The country had moved on, and with the prospect of headline-grabbing photos moving with it, so had the photographers. There was no one here and it angered me. This was still important (maybe even more important) I told myself. It seemed the storm was just the beginning of what was an entirely different, yet equally important story. Finally, I saw signs of movement up ahead in between the rows of destruction. In the distance was a man, walking all alone ahead of me in the middle of the street. He was just walking. He had nothing in his hands and he didnʼt even seem to be looking at anything in particular. He also wasnʼt stopping, he just kept moving forward. Maybe it was his first time back in his old neighborhood and he was just in shock over it all. I cannot overstate the absolute wasteland that beheld our collected view. It may seem like hyperbole all these years later, but it reminded me of images of Hiroshima after the Enola Gay paid a visit. The amount of force required to bend vehicles in half, to prop them up and balance them on air-conditioner window units, or bend and twist them around the corner of a building like an old aluminum can was just unfathomable. I didnʼt want to bother him in this moment of his, whatever it was for him. The last thing he needed was some young photographer asking questions. What the f*** could I do for him now? No, my duty was to witness — just be a witness and document— for the future, I thought pretentiously, a future that seemed in that moment both meaningless and hopeless.