USA, New Orleans, 2007, A Katrina mud covered flag is strewn in a church in the lower 9th ward. No one has begun to clean it up or renovate it.
Five months after Hurricane Katrina hit the US Gulf coast, Stanley Greene documented the aftermath.
Katrina's ravages, and the government's inept response to them, had highlighted not only New Orleans's systemic social and racial inequities, but America's leadership problems, as well. The aftermath left no doubt in people's mind that if anything characterized the Bush administration, it was a disturbingly consistent pattern of indecision, insensitivity and shortsightedness during moments of great crisis and human suffering.
USA, New Orleans, September 2005, Lake Shore Drive, outskirts of New Orleans, as the flood waters receded, cars and boats still were submerged in several feet of fetid water.
USA, New Orleans, January 2006, Two Asian tourists on a sight seeing tour to view the destruction and take holiday pictures of the aftermath.
USA, New Orleans, December 2005, As the flood waters receded, cars were found almost intact. They looked like something from a horror movie.
The hurricane effectively destroyed New Orleans and in the process, all pretense of equality. Katrina unleashed the insidious demon of racism, once again lifting the veil on America’s messy history.
Katrina unleashed the insidious demon of racism, once again lifting the veil on America’s messy history.
USA, New Orleans, January 2006, Saint Rita's nursing home. About 35 residents were believed to have died when the facility flooded during Katrina.
Profiteers of all colors emerged to secrete billions of dollars in funds and stolen property away from the citizens of the Gulf Coast with insurance fraud and non-payments of claims, this played against the backdrop of racial unease and overwhelming greed.
If these twin evils are indeed America’s history, Katrina, sadly enough, is simply yet another chapter.
USA, New Orleans, 2006, Narcotics division police officers in New Orleans felt that the lower 9th ward was a hotbed of crime, gambling, racketeering, graft, shootings, pimps, drugs and prostitution.