New Orleans, La 70117

New Orleans, La 70117
January 7, 2006

brian o'keefe :contact

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‘New Orleans, La 70117’
Saint Bernard Parish, January 7th 2006
4 months, 7 days and 15 hours after Hurricane Katrina

I yelled over to my friend Tony, “Hey, there are free CDs over here!” A wallet of CDs lay unspoiled at my feet. Tony gazed at me with an emotionless face; I then realized the owners would never reclaim anything that was left behind in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Trifles, little things, tidbits of someone’s memories were lost in a seemingly endless cemetery. Complete and utter devastation, I didn’t know where to aim my camera, I didn’t know what to think, the losses were deeply embedded in the soil, scattered without mercy; trinkets of memories lay under my feet. Only then I realized we were not alone.

There were no people, no faces to show repression or loss, no dead bodies floating in the water, no frail and starving poor, no wounded and/or bleeding children in a father’s arms which often becomes popular amongst many photographers to “reveal the human condition”. No, just the artifacts that could have been a birthday present or a favorite record of an old blind man. I have only captured what was washed away. On any other day these artifacts could have been discarded at the garbage dump or sold at a garage sale, but one day everything changed. I never want to comprehend. However, these items may have meant something to someone, maybe not. Yet as they lay under your feet in a world turned upside down, inside out, then pulled through hell and back, it made me wonder. Who listened to this record? Who wore this shoe? Who collected antique eggcups, and which little girl had lost her Cabbage Patch Kid?

The human condition lies in the objects that surround us and make our world. These are the objects that many Americans and other developed worlds take for granted. The luxuries we share as a society are only relative to the lives we lead, and regarding this idea, I am concerned. Even the poorest of the poor in our America have some luxury. ‘Time Magazine’ and other publishers capture, in horrific, photographic detail, the starving and the murdered in Africa; or the one legged boy in Afghanistan, or the skeleton child reaching from a makeshift hospital bed. For this, we are spoiled, because we CAN capture these images, and the photographer is only the messenger.

In our society we are all are spoiled and when the forces of nature, which we think we can control and predict, come pouring into our daily life. We point fingers and blame, every government, every gas emission and every irregular water current in the Artic Ocean. We again, point the finger and become lost in our own distraction. Ironically, human nature in our societies, stressing individuality; places blame on other individuals which, in the past, was blamed on supernatural and spiritual forces. However, nature is simply bigger than all of our biggest egos and nature itself, at almost any level, can knock us from our makeshift human pedestals. We believe our technology and our words of “security” are so strong and incorruptible. When these pedestals break, we scream in blame and social prejudice, and we can only watch as our social elements wash away.

No matter how great our societies are, no matter how much we plan and prepare, no matter how much we assure “security”, and no matter how many military men and women we muster, there will be another Katrina. We can never predict nature and its’ erratic force. It uproots with undiscriminating, ungoverned, incorruptible hate.

I am concerned because I am not alone; they were free CD’s. To another they remain lost forever.