Truck washed into the bayou, Old Highway 90, Louisiana

Tear Drop

Mr. Tom Page, 70, and Mr. Marshall Collins, 64. They and a few other elderly parishioners survived the rising floodwaters by hacking into the attic of their church, the Greater Mount Zion AME, in Pearlington, Mississippi. They sat and waited, watching snakes and alligators and church pews floating in the murky waters below.

Debris stretches from the highway to the horizon along old Route 90 from New Orleans to Slidell, LA. Normally this marsh would be green reeds to the horizon. That brownish sludge in the lower right corner of the photograph is what's left of the reeds.

For scale: The little round circle in the lower left foreground? That's a tabletop, like you'd have on a backyard deck. That little white dot in the middle of the horizon? An overturned shrimp boat.

Dog Dead Under House, Ninth Ward, New Orleans

Orealia Marshall, 45, Pearlington, Mississippi.

She and her two children and a cousin survived by clinging to the branches of a tree. The cousin died the day after the storm, and Orealia and her two children waited three days for officials to take the body.

One more dead, Lower Ninth ward, New Orleans. The markings on the side of this house indicate that one body was found inside. Even now, more than a year after the storm, bodies continue to be discovered.

James Peters, 58, Pearlington, Mississippi. He stands next to the boat he used to save the lives of thirteen people from the floodwaters.

Cpl. BE Blache, Charity Hospital Police, New Orleans.

Molding Fashion Magazine, Ninth Ward, New Orleans.

Bourbon Steet, New Orleans, Two Weeks After Katrina.

Ursulines Street, French Quarter, 4am.

Proud To Swim Home, French Quarter.

Dead Baby Alligator, Slidell, Louisiana

My Mother's Kitchen, Pearlington, Mississippi

"When I walked up to Brother Pierre he dropped the trash he was picking up and stood at attention, as if he was a Private and I a visiting General. When I said Hello he went slack, at ease. He was a reed, a wisp of a man. When I shook his hand it weighed nothing. I could have broken him with my fist, and this made me want to protect him. There were drops of water on his beard near where his mouth was. All these things about Brother Pierre I already knew, because I remembered him from my childhood."

"This is Ricki. She's homeless. And poor. She's been waiting in line in a Kmart parking lot for three hours, no shade, scorching summer. She's been waiting to get her FEMA claim number. She's heard they've been giving two thousand dollars in aid, but she's worried because they will only direct deposit it in bank accounts, or mail her a check. She's worried because she's poor, and doesn't have a bank account to direct deposit into. And she's worried because she's homeless, so she can't get the mail the check might be in.

Ricki is only 32. When I asked if I could take her picture she was worried she'd look bad because she hadn't done her hair. I told her she was beautiful. And I meant it."

A Mack truck rests on its side in someone's yard in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, on its back lays someone's sofa. Twenty days after this photograph was taken a reporter toured the area by bus, and wrote this:

"I'll admit it. I wasn't prepared for what I saw. And I can only begin to understand what it was like for the people who lived there. On Thursday, I rode along with residents from the devastated Lower 9th Ward in New Orleans as they toured the area by bus. For some, it was the first chance to see their homes, their neighbors and their belongings. But they weren't allowed to get off the bus. This angered some; others knew there was simply nothing to salvage.

Officials said this restriction was because the houses aren't structurally sound, and because bodies are still being recovered. We did see at least one K-9 cadaver team during the tour. Home after home was destroyed by the flooding after the breach in the levee beside the Industrial Canal. Block after block is nearly unrecognizable as a place where people once went about their daily lives.

Even the residents on the bus described it as looking like a movie set."

Katrina Survivors, Pearlington, Mississippi.

"The Catholic church that once stood along the little highway that winds through Pearlington now exists as a small pile of rubble on either side of it. Broken pews and torn hymnals. Smashed statues of Jesus and bent altar rails. Like the rest of Pearlington, it smells like dust and mold and death.

A small pack of dogs now roam the former grounds of the church. They're hungry and dirty, and have largely reverted back to nature. The leader of the pack is this large golden dog, scruffy and proud, his snout swollen and bruised. I took to calling him King, because that's the way he acted, and was treated by his pack.

That's King, above, standing atop the rubble of the church, the Virgin Mary in the background and the swamps behind her. King's barking at some well-meaning animal rescue volunteers from Virginia who were trying to catch him and his pack. It was a fifteen minute stand-off, but in the end they ran off with their tails between their legs.

The animal rescue people, did, that is."

"You get used to something living in the Deep South, especially in the swampy lands around New Orleans, and the bayous near the Mississippi Gulf. You get used to the knowledge that the land around you, that nature, is slowly and constantly creeping in on you. Sneakily seeking to devour your home, it's possessions, and maybe even your slow moving pets. Vines. Kudzu. Weeds. Mold.

But what I saw inside my mom's trailer was like a bad sci-fi movie. The whole thing was being devoured, coated on all surfaces by what looked to be many different species of creeping mold. Dark black mold, green mossy mold, light cotton-candy mold, slimy algae mold. Above, my mom's living room ceiling, which was formerly white."

My Mother, Hurt.
My Mother, Protective.

"Here's a street I used to ride my bike on as a child. Apple Pie Ridge Road. That rubble you see used to be homes, from humble trailers to decent brick houses. Once, oaks and magnolia trees stretched their limbs over this road, creating a shady canopy. Now, sticks and stones, and broken bones and torn families. My mom was just relieved the National Guard had managed to dig the road out. Before, it had just been a solid field of rubble next to the bayou. It used to smell like magnolias. Now it smells like black mud and mold and death. You know what roadkill smells like? Worse than that. It's still in my clothes as I type this."

Flooded Car, Waveland, Mississippi

"Many people parked their cars along this highway, because it's the highest point in town. It wasn't high enough. There were at least dozens of cars and trucks tossed and littered along a stretch of highway maybe three miles long. It was like the La Brea Tarpits for automobiles. Like I could imagine them struggling vainly to right themselves, to pull themselves out of the ditch and clean up, to await their owner's return."

"Hymnal, photographed as it rested, in the rubble of the Catholic church, Pearlington, MS.

Page 196: The Lord Is My True Shepherd
"The Lord is my true Shepherd, My needs and wants he knows;
Though I should walk in darkness No evil shall I fear;
His goodness and his kindness Shall ever follow me"

My sweet aunt and uncle still struggle in Slidell. There's eleven of them forced into one house now, with all the kids and in-laws. FEMA still has no timeline for temporary housing. A mythical program exists in the dreams and hushed whispers of victims waiting in the FEMA lines. Legend has it that FEMA has secured thousands of shiny white trailers for people to live in while the world is rebuilt. Trailer cities are coming for the homeless. An Eldorado with dwellings where only two people live in a room together. My aunt and uncle are on the List. Right now, lists are Life.

But she wonders how they're going to do it? The place across the street used to rent for $700, and now it's a steal at $1750. Somebody's making a killing. All the housing's blown away. Supply and demand. Carpetbagging a new Reconstruction.

"Can I do anything for you? Anything? What do you need?" I say.
"Pray for us, baby." She says.

But I never was much of a prayer."

"The boat was at the exit to the parking lot, and Hager and a partner were stationed there to make sure nobody came in the wrong way. They seemed to be enjoying the sunset, and drop in temperature, because they work in those long-sleeve fatigues all day, and the heat is brutal. After I took his picture he said to me, "Want to see the real story?" and showed me what was written near the steering wheel:

"Sorry about your boat it saved 5 peoples lives.""

Philip Turner, 62. Alva McKay, 44. New Orleans

"At the moment this picture was taken, Philip's earthly possessions consisted of a large lady's bike he called his Cadillac, a small bag of clothing, a nine iron, and a half-gone twelve-pack of beer.

Alva was helping him finish the beer. She was also from the Ninth Ward. She was separated from her entire family, and her husband. She was distraught, and despite Philip's heroically drunken efforts to make her laugh, she often slipped into quiet tears. She asked me if I remembered that big wave that happened last year. It happened on Christmas, she said. She said she cried when that happened, and she knew in her bones that New Orleans was next. She said she was no Bible thumper, but that God was so powerful he just flicked his hand and her family was gone. And when she said this she made a flicking gesture, like dusting off her arm. She said God's so powerful, and tears started. So powerful, she said softly. She asked, Do you believe? No, do you believe?

I don't even know what I'm saying anymore, these days. What am I saying? Like Alva, I'm no Bible thumper. I don't even believe. But I'm saying, when you look at the faces of my people, I'm saying you need to know, really know, that "There But for the Grace of God go I." We're all one really bad day from oblivion. I'm saying, live with that in mind every day, and you'll understand the power and love and soul of New Orleans, and my family."

Iberville Housing Projects from Basin Street, New Orleans

"This was where Storyville stood. Where Louis Armstrong was born, and sang the Basin Street Blues. Where jazz was dreamed up. Where EJ Bellocq photographed the prostitutes. It was the underbelly, the joy, the passion, the fear, the anger, the sex, the death. The wild sweaty life. They tore it down and built a big prison, what you see here. The Iberville Housing Projects. Now empty and quiet, its residents storm-tossed first to the Superdome, then the Astrodome, who knows where now. Next door is St. Louis Cemetery #1, where Marie Laveau sleeps. All's quiet and dead on Basin Street tonight, and it's lonely."

My Grandmother's Abandoned House, Mckain Street, New Orleans

"I hadn't been back since I was a teenager. Half my life ago. But I felt the pull so strongly, the drive, the call, I risked life to get there, just to see it again. Why? I'm asking myself this. I don't know what's going to come of my hometown, my family's hometown, New Orleans. But I know that the ghettoes are going to be bulldozed. And I don't want to ever forget where I come from. It's how I know where I'm going. This little shack is what made my mom and her sisters who they are, and they're who made me who I am. I take pictures to remember, and to feel, and I needed to always remember Mckain Steet, and to feel it, no matter where I go."

"Charity Hospital loomed large as a horror house for my family. They lost themselves there, literally. Eyes. Teeth. Limbs. Lives. All butchered, then forgotten about. Your cat or dog, First World America, was getting better health care than the poor wretched humans forced to decide between nothing, and Charity. And that was their only choice.

It's always been that way down here. Charity Hospital was founded over 250 years ago, which makes it about the oldest hospital in America. It was wretched from the start, because, after all, you get what you pay for, and this was literally a "Hospital for the Poor."

In 1815 someone wrote, upon visiting Charity Hospital, that it "served no purpose than to confine the wretched and compel them to die in a place contrary to their choice." Patients were found abandoned. Chickens wandered in, and their shit covered the furniture. The mattresses on which the patients slept were filthy with “the visible marks of the putrid discharges of those who had died on them of the most pestilential diseases."

My Two Loves, 2006

Torn Marriage Certificate, Bay St Louis, Mississippi

Fats Domino's Wall Clock, Lower Ninth Ward, New Orleans

"My mom's always been spiritual, when I was young it was in a vaguely Earth Mother hippy way, as she gets older it's getting more specifically Christian. She's still not a big formal churchgoer, but she refuses to accept my atheistic ways. She's always telling me that I'm a real Promise-Keeper, and that God's working through me with my art, and that it's just a question of time before I understand.

When I was kneeling down to take this picture my mom said to my girl, "See that? It's like he's praying."

And she wasn't wrong."

"Fuck keeping hope alive. Who are we kidding? Our lives are that fragile lampshade, and our fate is that black mold, and that's it. I want to sleep, not take pictures or talk to FEMA or put on a happy strong face.

Enough. Sleep. Ignore. Delay. Distract. I'm done being the lampshade,

I want to be the black mold."

"JR had a small houseboat just off of Highway 90, or as locals call it "Old 90", the two-lane highway that hugs the marshes and inlets from New Orleans heading east, to the white beaches of Biloxi. His houseboat and shell-gravel yard was overrun with oddities and knick-knacks, a perpetual yard sale. He had a little fenced pit with a pig in it, and whenever you'd buy something from him and offer payment (whatever you wanted) he'd nod towards the pit and say "Give it to the pig."

JR's houseboat is long gone, and his knick-knacks washed away. No telling where the pig is. The block in the foreground says:

"JR if you come here please call me - Dorothy Gardner", and then, under that, a hurried postscript, "Hope you are alive, you was my best friend. 'Smile'.""

"My mom now owns:
1. The majority of her family photos and snapshots.
2. A minority of her cherished framed pictures (well, at least the small ones.)
3. My baby book and the baby shoes that all three of her sons have worn.
4. Inspirational notes she's written to herself.
5. Notes from me as a child telling her to not be depressed, because it's sunny outside.
6. My fingerpaintings.
7. A Taurus 38 Special revolver, loaded (blue-steel finish.)
8. Her purse.
9. The clothes on her back.

My little brother now owns:
1. An old wooden chess set.
2. A skateboard.
3. His CD collection (what's left of it), in an old zippered case.
4. A hand-me-down CD walkman.
5. His backpack.
6. The clothes on his back.

It all fits on a small coffee table."

"We're married.

Walking through a deserted French Quarter, my people blown by hurricane to the four corners of the world, my tough little Yankee girl at my side from day one, we passed by a boarded wedding chapel.

I stopped her and said, "Last chance. This is as low as I've ever been. You want out, I don't blame you."

She said, without breathing, intense dark eyes staring into me, "Never. Never."

So I said, "I marry you. I marry you. I marry you. Here in my city, just us, under this setting sun, I marry you."

And we took this picture, as the sun faded to pink over the empty and quiet French Quarter."

"Me, my mom, my little brother, in happier times.

It was under over 25 feet of swamp water."