Photographer Justin Lundgren says:
A few weeks prior to Hurricane Katrina, I completed this photo project with the intent of displaying the images in a New Orleans gallery. Clearly that's not going to happen any time soon. When I evacuated my now-flooded house, these photos were among the few possessions that I saved. I look at the images now and realize with some despair what's been lost.
New Orleans has been my adopted home for a total of ten years, and for the most part it's been a love affair that has enriched my life enormously. While the city has always had its share of problems, the good has always outweighed the bad, the cultural richness and celebratory feel of the place has always been its strongpoint. Now that the city has been reshaped by this disaster, I wonder what I'll be returning to in the coming weeks. I worry that the quirkiness of its people and that the physical charm of the landscape will be irreparably harmed. I look at these images now and feel privileged to have been witness to the glory that was New Orleans. Hopefully, a reverse diaspora will occur over the next few months to reinvigorate this beloved and beleaguered town.
These images will be for sale in various formats once I have a chance to get home and assess the condition of my printer.
Link to Justin's dazzlingly beautiful photoblog. When you click on an image to see full size, you'll get a page-load of crap-code — he needs to fix something there, but for the meantime you can just save-as that file, then rename with a jpeg extension, and open your locally saved image in order to view the large size. I can't figure out how to reach the guy, but if anyone else can… maybe you can help him out with that.
Boing Boing friend Jonno D'addario, a blogger who was displaced from his NOLA home by Katrina, pointed us to this collection of images and said:
If anyone wonders why I can't wait to get back home and start rebuilding my life in New Orleans, now they know.
(Thanks, Jonno)
