CAROL ROBINSON GALLERY
840 Napoleon Avenue New Orleans
continues to show my
KATRINA PHOTOGRPHY
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
RESILIENCE 3
10th Anniversary of Katrina
Friday, August 28, 2015 7-10 pm
TEKREMA CENTER for ART & CULTURE
5640 Burgundy Street New Orleans, LA
Exhibit through September 14 (by appointment)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Other Katrina photographs are also hanging at the
MAKE IT RIGHT FOUNDATION New Orleans
I have been recently posting my images and thoughts about Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath at a time that is very bittersweet for many New Orleanians, ten years later. Media coverage at the time telecast the enormity of the tragedy, but I needed to relate to this disaster on a closer, more personal level, capturing the individual rather than the collective tragedy. I have always tried to find beauty and humanity in my surroundings; my challenge was to continue in this vein…By zooming in on the details, simple objects represented enormous loss – these images are universal, yet deeply personal. And there is beauty in them.
What struck me most when I entered the disaster zones was the sheer silence. I saw no people, no moving cars, no birds, no vegetation, no sound other than rustling debris. Mud was caked everywhere. Mud had quickly made its way up walls. The aftermath of cataclysmic upheavals of furniture and personal belongings was overwhelming. The guts were ripped from homes and lives. I felt that I was on a movie set depicting the death of a city. The wasteland seemingly had no beginning and no end.
Someone’s closet laid bare for all to see,,, a wedding picture found strewn in the dried mud….a neighbor’s window blinds bent by the forces of water…what was once a cherished sofa now finding its demise in a Katrina landfill….
I hope these images can present a part of New Orleans history. Such tragedies need to be surmounted but not forgotten.
Excerpt “Eye of the Storm”, photo-essay by Sandra Burshell, Louisiana Cultural Vista Magazine, Louisiana Endowment for the Arts, Fall, 2008
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
My KATRINA images also were exhibited at the New Orleans Museum of Art, “Katrina Exposed”, 2006
New Orleans Academy of Fine Arts, “Response to Katrina”, 2006
appeared in WHERE WE KNOW: NEW ORLEANS AS HOME, Chin Music Press, 2010
NEW ORLEANS BY NEW ORLEANS, compiled by Smolar/Potucek, 2012
A selection of my KATRINA images can also be viewed on my website.
sandra burshell