Jarret Schecter: Katrina Personal Objects

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, this small format book touches on the ephemeral, and surprisingly often beautiful, remnants of belongings that once made up the memories and precious moments of people's lives. On August 29th 2005, Katrina, a natural hurricane, struck the city of New Orleans. Nobody envisaged the damage and destruction it would wreak on the southern US city, and it became on a much greater scale a manmade disaster of civil engineering and social discrimination. Because of government failure, millions viewed political ineptitude, social inequity and an unpaved America where the streets were lined with anything but gold. The images in this book show the abandoned and hardest-hit district of the Lower Ninth Ward over two years later, and still counting today. Vacant and dilapidated, the city is a shadow of its former self. However, in these seemingly lifeless shadows, and through the broken windows of empty houses, one can eerily see the ghostly reflections of life and death in the form of personal objects. These intensely personal items have been abandoned and left, and in most cases, will never be reclaimed.