I landed back in New Orleans airport a few days before Hurricane Katrina hit. As I arrived, everyone else was departing.
My photographer’s eye caught something different in their faces. Families, business travelers, the young and the old, all of them were scrambling to leave the city. Their eyes said it all: Why is he coming in when we’re all trying to get out?
Looking back, I feel like maybe I was destined to go through Katrina and photograph those early post-storm days from my front porch.
I was coming from an attempted vacation in Florida, where Katrina hit first as a Category 1 storm that soon fizzled out. But then Katrina moved back into the Gulf of Mexico and started bulking up. It set its sights on New Orleans, where I had done nothing to prepare for a storm. Relaxation was not in the cards for me, I decided.
I headed back to New Orleans, got through my to-do list – empty the refrigerator, clear the yard of all moving objects, etc. –then tried to leave.
But after an hour and a half of driving in evacuation traffic, I had only made it to Williams Boulevard.
I headed back home. I would be facing this storm head-on.
The porch and Katrina, sounding like a monster
That night, I alternated my time between watching the news and sitting outside in the humid air on my porch, where I’d built a little garden and a makeshift photography studio. The porch was where I photographed my neighbors. Kids would come for prom and homecoming pictures.
Like most real New Orleans porches, it also served a social function. Families would stop by just to be seen and chat a bit. Mostly, kids that came over and sat on the porch with me, telling me their school stories and other youthful adventures. They called me Picture Man.
The porch meant something to me, and so did the plants. They gave me peace. It was the spot where I meditated and said my evening prayers. I followed that routine on Sunday night, as Katrina was drawing close.
People say hurricanes sound like freight trains. Katrina sounded different to me. It sounded like a monster. It wasn’t mechanical; it was organic. The wind carried so much debris that I saw what looked like shapes moving through the alleyways — long snakes twisting through the streets, shadows climbing rooftops. I had never seen anything like it.
As the eye passed, everything went quiet again. It was eerie, like nighttime in the middle of the day. Then the winds roared back, and my old house started groaning like it was taking deep breaths. I could hear the pressure shifts, the creaks in the attic. Drafts came through the windows and doors. I was scared — really scared. I thought the house was going to collapse.
And then, just like that, it was over. Until the water came.
The water as mirror
I sat on my porch steps. The street in front of me was becoming a river. Inside, I stacked three mattresses to elevate me high off the floor in case the deluge flowed indoors. I was now officially stranded.
Water was everywhere. I saw its danger but also its magnificence.
Even the oil slicks on the surface of the water were beautiful as the evening sun went down. In a strange way, the water off my porch became a black mirror for personal reflection and examination.
That mindset shaped me as I revived my porch photography studio and began taking portraits again. In my subjects’ faces, I saw a certain grit and determination. Eventually, using leaves and debris left behind by the floodwaters, I created a filter for my photos that matched the mood of that time.
Between photos, the water confined me to my apartment. I cooked food on a propane grill and gave it away to neighbors so it wouldn’t spoil. But I also wanted people to see me there. Word had gotten around that I was still home. I overheard some guys talking: “Is Mr. Gus still there?”
Eventually, I packed a bag of sealed garbage bags containing my medicines, some essentials, and my camera. I walked through waist-deep water until I reached Carrollton and Walmsley, where helicopters were evacuating people from a school.
I can still see that corner today, the tree canopy torn open by rotor blades. Every time I pass it, it brings me back.
Post-Katrina life
In time, I made it out. I bounced between Houston, Donaldsonville, and Baton Rouge. In between, I went back and forth to New Orleans to check on my place, which miraculously remained untouched. A few months later, my son Blake was born — on November 28, 2005. Seeing him and his mother safe and healthy gave me strength.
And that’s when my photography truly changed. The porch sessions grew into something new.
I returned to Carrollton for good, with a vivid memory of the black watery mirror off my porch. I wanted prints that carried that magnificence. I needed filters, textures and colors.
I began scanning the leaves that had fallen from my porch garden, many of them knocked down during the storm. Their browns and strange colors spoke to me. Even in decay, they carried life. They reminded me that death feeds the soil, and from it, something new can grow.
I merged those scanned leaves with portraits of friends, family, and neighbors. I called the series Organic Watermarks. It wasn’t traditional photography. It was portraits blended with the textures Katrina left behind. Some carried 18 layers of photographs and scanned images, to mimic debris settling with the blue sky above and the colors and palettes and textures that I’d gathered outside my house.
To me, those waterlines, oil slicks, and dying leaves weren’t just wreckage. They were symbols of survival, of possibility.
I made those images because I knew one day my son would ask me, “Dad, how was Hurricane Katrina?”
I didn’t want to hand him only destruction. I wanted to show him hope — that even in chaos, there is beauty, there is resilience, and there is possibility.
The porch became my altar. Everyone who came to me for a portrait wrapped themselves in a piece of fabric I had saved. Some people had only donated clothes; others showed up in their best. But the fabric made them all one tribe again.
It wasn’t about the storm anymore. It was about their beauty.
Katrina took almost everything from the city of New Orleans. But it also gave me something I never let go of, a way to see hope in the middle of chaos.
Nearly 20 years later, I’m still creating in that spirit. Organic Watermarks began on my porch, but it became a lifelong reminder that even in decay, life continues.