Bernard Smith and Katy Reckdahl on the men trapped in the Orleans Parish Prison and Broad Street Bridge in the wake of the levee breaches after Hurricane Katrina that flooded New Orleans.
Inspired by the floodwaters after Katrina and the birth of his son, photographer Gus Bennett created a new photography series, Organic Watermarks. Some images include 18 different layers of post-storm textures.
The 2005 abandonment of incarcerated people within the flooded Orleans Parish jail complex became one of the catalysts to reform the city’s dysfunctional justice system
“There’s something full circle about our Katrina baby protecting swimmers in the Lower 9th Ward from deep water,” Lens editor Katy Reckdahl writes in an essay about the city and her son, who was born 23 hours before Katrina struck the city.
"Like the rest of the country, New Orleans is suspended in a state of anxious anticipation. This tourism-dependent city is tiptoeing into reopening, with neither a vaccine nor widespread testing. It’s a dilemma facing every municipality, but in a city whose identity, culture and economy are fueled by human interactions, the issue seems particularly fraught here." Martin Pedersen interviews author and former Lens editor Jed Horne about the tough times ahead.
The disaster narrative that national observers are habituated to look for has blinded them to a lot of what’s going on in our schools ...
Most white people say the recovery is going well. Most black people believe the opposite.
Thousands of houses and buildings were razed after the storm. We went back to some of those properties to see what's there now. What we found shows how some parts of the city have rebounded while others struggle, just as they did before the storm.
Two authors approach the recovery from divergent angles, gleaning fresh insights into the long road we've traveled.
Rents are rising faster than incomes in New Orleans, and federally-funded rebuilding resulted in fewer units than planned.
