Biloxi-Ocean Springs Bridge, post-Hurricane Katrina. Biloxi, Mississippi
Anyone who's set foot on any of those hundreds of square miles Hurricane Katrina scoured throughout August 29, 2005 knows how hard it has since been to find something unbroken to photograph, rather than the other way around. The following are not rare views, but the most telling or poetic of my several months spent in Southern Mississippi. It was my deep honor to be part of the still-coalescing Burners Without Borders – a volunteer recovery crew of otherworldly people in an otherworldly time and place.
( www.burnerswithoutborders.org )
All these photos were taken in color with my modest 1.3 megapixel Sony Erickson S710a camera phone (save for Tom Price’s wonderful shot of our returning at sunset on the B.R.S. (Black Rock Ship) Tomfoolery, whose historic importance required its inclusion.)
My color correction and “sepia/hand-colored” processing, done in Adobe Photoshop, is consistent with my experience in the region. Sepia tone suggests a squint into history, and this storm event was historic in proportions we are still stretching to comprehend. It really did leave a predominantly grey-brown world, stripped of leaves, shingles, paint, replaced with sun bleach, mud and mold. And then while moving through heap after wave of endless storm debris, my soul was constantly challenged and expanded through the new sad beauty, or sometimes awkward humor, of these mangled items, sighing to me upon my eventual recognition.
These photos are presented more or less chronologically, and were taken between four and seven months after the storm. At times almost taunting in the face of so much clean-up effort, who knows how many years these scenes, large and small, will slump there, waiting...
Lisa Benham
July, 2006
~ On with the slideshow ~
Addendum: Two photos from this series (Shootin' Santa and Please don't steal the little I have left...) were selected for print publication in the art photo book Signs of Life, a beautiful fund-raising project for selected relief organizations still working in the area.
As a result of this photo gallery, I was invited to write an on-line story of these experiences, published on Orato.
© 2006 Lisa Benham