Today is quite a day for you. It’s not only the sixth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina but it’s also your older son’s sixth birthday. Your book, Hurricane Story, is a gorgeous photographic memoir of both those events. It’s so deeply personal yet totally universal. Can you tell us about going through labor and the hurricane at the same time, which is not for the faint-hearted?!
Thank you for the kind words! September 2nd was my estimated due date, so when we left New Orleans on Aug. 28th I was in deep denial, hoping that the storm would turn and we could get back home to give birth as planned. But the low-pressure system sped things up a bit. On the morning of the 29th we had to make a fairly quick decision whether to stay in lower Alabama or risk a 300 mile drive north to Huntsville, where a friend had located a plan B midwife for us, “just in case.”
We left the motel at 7:30am and were relieved to find the roads — and the weather — pretty clear. My husband sped around 90 mph the entire way, as my labor intensified. We did not listen to the radio for updates; we really had to ignore the hurricane factor and calmly focus on the task at hand.
I called the midwife en route, to introduce myself and let her know we were on the way. We got to the hospital around 1:30 in the afternoon, where we adamantly refused all talk of Katrina and gave birth to a healthy baby boy two hours later. We did not tune in to see what the hurricane had wrought until the following morning, as we needed some time to simply enjoy getting to know our first child.
When and why did you decide to write a book about your experiences?
The idea came to me in the spring of 2006. I think the whole experience was so intense that I had to process it through art to stay sane. As a photographer, I was used to expressing myself visually, but this time words were also necessary to complete the story. A book seemed like the perfect mode of communication.
How did you decide on the format? Why did you decide to stage scenarios with toys as opposed to taking photos of what was actually happening?
The format was inspired by comics and graphic novels; the idea being to use images combined with brief text so that that each would inform the other. As for the toys, I didn’t really document everything along the way, and even if I had, using “real” photographs would have been too close and personal. Illustrating the scenes in miniature allowed me to control the details in order to convey some of the emotional atmosphere of that time period, and also gain a little distance from the actual events.
The book has such a surreal quality which, I would imagine, is how the whole experience felt to you. The photos are so haunting yet ultimately hopeful. The juxtaposition between “The chaos was hard to fathom” and “I’ll confess that fall was beautiful” is truly breathtaking. What are you hoping people will take away from your book?
I think the bottom line is empathy. Natural disasters are occurring with alarming frequency, and thousands are dealing with the emotional effects of evacuation, loss and recovery.
This is an impossible question for an artist, but which of the photos stand out as especially personally meaningful to you?
Of course I love them all, and might answer this question differently on another day. I think the ones I most relish combine a sense of melancholy with an intense beauty. There’s “We drove further north to the farm” – the horse with the moody sky – which was about going to my mom’s house in Delaware. I could get lost for hours in the colors of “It was months till the phone was restored,” which depicts the windblown telephone poles that were prevalent throughout the city. And there’s also “It was nice to have a distraction,” which represents me holding the baby. In my mind it has the soundtrack, “aaahhhhh,” as in: cue the angels singing. It is about the amazement over and focus on one’s newborn infant.
How has life changed for you since Katrina?
We now have two children, which is not actually hurricane related, but has certainly been a life changer. I’ve been teaching, which I love, for five years now, the previous instructor having settled elsewhere after Katrina. Perhaps the biggest change for me has involved community building and volunteerism. In 2006 I was part of a group of photographers who founded the New Orleans Photo Alliance, a non-profit arts organization. I spearheaded PhotoNOLA, an annual festival of photography, which is now gearing up for its sixth year. It’s an intense volunteer job, but it’s been very rewarding to work with like-minded people on one piece of the “cultural rebuilding” that’s been happening in New Orleans since Katrina.
For those who suffered through the wrath of Hurricane Irene this weekend, your “Anointed in glitter, we reclaimed the streets” ending is pretty empowering. Is there a message you’d like to send those in her wake?
Breathe deep and have faith. Even if things look bleak in the immediate aftermath, chances are a silver lining will appear eventually.
Today is the 6th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina directly hitting Biloxi MS. It still seems like only yesterday and each time the anniversary comes around tears still well up in my eyes. We decided to stay in our home and I still remember the fear when the winds began to take off part of our roof. A tornado hit our back yard and it stripped the bark off of our trees as easily as peeling a banana. Worst of all though, was the awful silence which followed soon afterward. The air was so still and because of no communication, we felt as if we were the only people left in the world. We lost all communication and power for weeks. There is nothing as frightening as not knowing if anyone knows what happened to you as there is no way to call anyone. The hurricane changed my life forever and the emotions which went with it will always linger in my heart, especially when I remember how my city looked the day after the hurricane left.