Shawn Hall is a New Orleans-based artist who evacuated to a number of different locales to wait out the post-Katrina exile endured by most New Orleans residents. Hall has since returned permanently to her home city and has yet to move back into her house (Hurricane Katrina made landfall at New Orleans on August 29, 2005). Wburg contacted Hall to request that we publish her haunting photos documenting her journey. We are pleased to also present some of her written diary entries of that time.
The following series of photographs are all digital double negative photos, 8" x 11" in original size, assembled while Shawn was an artist in residence with the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council in 2005/06 after the storm.
– Ed.
November 14, 2005
I'm flying out of New Orleans, back to New York for a week - where we evacuated to for a month and a half after Texas and Mississippi. The scene below me is beautiful and odd; the residential land is bright with blue tarps and the wooded swamplands are all broken trees. I've been back for exactly a week, after driving in from Mississippi through 100 miles of downed-tree-lined highway, and little towns battered but still functioning amidst the wreckage. It’s funny to see it now from above after seeing so much of it from the side. It completely throws me back into that week before:
November 7, 2005
We’re driving in from the east through Slidell, which is totally wiped, over the twin span bridge, which is running two lanes on one span, the other missing huge chunks of mostly bridge, but in some cases pilings as well.
Nothing could have prepared me for New Orleans East. Everything is the color of mud; new car dealerships with entirely mud-covered cars, apartment complexes (closer to the highway) with contents and cars and trees and parts of houses, mud-colored and strewn, in chaotic piles, in every yard, with the streets barely cleared. It's been 74 days since Katrina happened. This is why the streets of NO East are cleared, the highway is passable, and the twin span is open. This is only the beginning.
Following the I-10 into New Orleans, passing over the industrial canal, we can't see so well where the breach in the levee was. But getting off on Franklin Ave., traveling into our neighborhood, on the "dry side of the levee breach", the streets are unbelievable. Water lines, where the water sat half-way up the houses, damaged roofs and abandoned cars showing 6 or 7 water marks from the top of the cars down, marking about a foot total, showing the gentle lowering of the waters over time. Beautiful old houses in poor areas, so nobody is rushing in to gut and salvage these homes like we find in other areas. These homes were already a picture of time... all from another era, beautiful shot guns and all the variations that you find in old wood-framed homes in New Orleans, now sitting like a snapshot of a broken and abandoned war zone. We pass our friends' parents’ house, still standing but really completely destroyed; roof damaged, no blue tarp, side of the house gone, sitting lower than where we've been driving, and flooded for days, so probably all is lost inside. I cried all they way in.
The first thing that strikes us both about our neighborhood is how small the streets feel, how cozy and small it all feels after being away for so long. There is much wind damage, but not the same kind of piles of garbage as in other areas. This is because we were on the edge of flooding, so people aren't gutting and throwing everything out from every single house on the block; only the ones that had roof damage and consequently got water then mold. Maybe every other house or so. Lots of refrigerators everywhere. Fences down, A few people on the street. It looks a little more hopeful. And it is.
Traveling the next day to the Lake View area to witness the beautiful boulevards piled two and three stories high with garbage - blocks of tree debris being mulched slowly, blocks of refrigerators, household goods, building materials, food garbage, all waiting to be trucked off somewhere. Unbelievable piles. And there is so much more to be picked up.
We turn into the neighborhood and have to let the dog out to pee, so I jump out (I can because the traffic is so slow through this part of the city) and Mark stops for me a block or so up. The ground is crusty and brown - all the green dead. There are bits of all kinds of garbage everywhere. It feels like it's toxic, it looks scary. It hasn't rained in weeks and weeks, which means it's dusty. That's what makes it scary.
November 22, 2005
Last night I went to a neighborhood meeting. An Entergy rep said it will be 6 to 8 months before we stop having the 22 - 23 hour power outages we are experiencing regularly. Bellsouth said we may have phone and Internet service by January, but this seemed unrealistic considering what they are up against. We as a neighborhood have an option of getting a "slick on wheels", which is a giant thing that will allow us to have either a t-1 line or wireless service. We'll see. What complicates matters for our area, the Bywater, is that we share our 70117 zip code with the devastated Holy Cross area in the lower 9th ward, and Entergy and Bellsouth haven't been able to figure that out - that we are a different neighborhood and are fine and need service. Same with the 70116 zip, which the Marigny shares with the French Quarter. Entergy and Bellsouth think the Marigny must be fine because the French Quarter is, but no! Different neighborhoods, hooked up to different sub stations. It's crazy. And it takes our city council rep to try to straighten that out.
I went to Whole Foods tonight - the new giant one in Metarie, since the New Orleans store won't be open for some time, after I dropped Mark off at the airport. It was reduced to operating at a quarter of its capacity, with partitions and very limited stock. They said it won't be until March before it's restocked, but I'm sure it's really about waiting and seeing how many people come back. At least they opened again. Barnes and Noble across the street was empty - and I've heard they are not coming back. Small businesses along the route seemed about half open, many still boarded up or emptied out. Driving back the I-10 is closed going into New Orleans from veterans - don't know why. They route us to the 610 - which is a black highway at night. And getting off at Elysian Fields Boulevard. there are no street lights or stop lights, and no lighted homes. Everything is dark and eerie. All over the city there are no stoplights working at many intersections. Now, with our "neutral ground" boulevards, you go through 2 stop signs to cross a major street. There are now 8 stop sign intersections. People have always driven badly, but now everyone is very distracted, and the lack of lights don't help. It's really a scary free for all.
Shawn Hall is a visual artist who often explores other mediums along side painting, considered her primary work for the past 20 years. She bought her first digital camera about a week before the storm, which was fortuitous. Katrina took her to the LMCC in NYC and 18th Street in Los Angeles on artist residencies this past year, and will take her to France and Santa Fe in the coming year. Hall is a frequent collaborator and instigator, and has been known to bake, or fire up, a cake or two.
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