Katrina, One Year Later: Three Perspectives
Todd Bertolaet, Florida A&M University
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Photographer Todd Bertolaet's Statement:
For me, even though I live in Florida, hurricanes were something that happened to other communities and to other people. That changed in the summer of 2004 when Charley, Francis, Ivan, and Jeanne came to visit. Although my community was not hit directly by these hurricanes, everyone in Tallahassee was affected by them and the anxiety of not knowing where they would land. Having lived in the area for several years, my family and I had developed a fairly large network of friends in north Florida. In the summer of 2004 our network was in constant touch about who would be evacuating to where and coming to stay with whom. Hurricane Ivan was the storm that affected me the most.
After Ivan hit the Pensacola area friends called me to come over, not to photograph the aftermath but to bring over supplies and help make repairs on homes. Over a period of months I traveled from Tallahassee to Pensacola several times to help repair roofs, clear downed trees, repair hurricane walls, etc. During the down times, in between repair projects, I would go out and photograph. Along the beach and up the lagoons the devastation was severe. One late afternoon I was photographing in the Grand Lagoon subdivision when a woman in a silver car sped up to me, nearly hitting me in her approach. She rolled down her window and abruptly asked what I was doing. Usually I would be put off by such force and forwardness, but almost unthinkingly I responded to her by saying that I had appreciated all that she and her family had gone through, that I was not there as a representative of the media, or an insurance company, but rather I was photographing for historical purposes, and if she wished for me to pack up my cameras and leave I would do so. After I said that she broke into tears, then got out of her car and began to tell me about the storm. She made me promise to photograph her house before I left for the evening. After she left I went to her house. All that remained was the concrete slab and the front door in its frame propped up by two flowerpots in which she had just planted new flowers. Earlier she had told me that she and her neighbors were bound and determined to return and rebuild, that it wasn't so much Ivan that had killed their spirits but the storm of paperwork raining down on them from insurance companies and other bureaucracies. Everywhere I went to photograph in the months that followed I would look out over the devastation and wonder why anyone would come back after experiencing this.
After Ivan hit the Pensacola area friends called me to come over, not to photograph the aftermath but to bring over supplies and help make repairs on homes. Over a period of months I traveled from Tallahassee to Pensacola several times to help repair roofs, clear downed trees, repair hurricane walls, etc. During the down times, in between repair projects, I would go out and photograph. Along the beach and up the lagoons the devastation was severe. One late afternoon I was photographing in the Grand Lagoon subdivision when a woman in a silver car sped up to me, nearly hitting me in her approach. She rolled down her window and abruptly asked what I was doing. Usually I would be put off by such force and forwardness, but almost unthinkingly I responded to her by saying that I had appreciated all that she and her family had gone through, that I was not there as a representative of the media, or an insurance company, but rather I was photographing for historical purposes, and if she wished for me to pack up my cameras and leave I would do so. After I said that she broke into tears, then got out of her car and began to tell me about the storm. She made me promise to photograph her house before I left for the evening. After she left I went to her house. All that remained was the concrete slab and the front door in its frame propped up by two flowerpots in which she had just planted new flowers. Earlier she had told me that she and her neighbors were bound and determined to return and rebuild, that it wasn't so much Ivan that had killed their spirits but the storm of paperwork raining down on them from insurance companies and other bureaucracies. Everywhere I went to photograph in the months that followed I would look out over the devastation and wonder why anyone would come back after experiencing this.
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When David Wharton asked if I would be interested in photographing the Mississippi Coast with him and Bruce West on the one year anniversary of Katrina's landfall, I agreed, not telling him that I had already reached Hurricane-anxiety overload months earlier. It had been a few years since I had visited the Mississippi Gulf Coast and this would be a good way to see the significance of Katrina's imprint, especially being that a year had elapsed since landfall. My oldest daughter accompanied me. The days that David, my daughter Emma, and I spent photographing the coastal communities were dreadfully hot and humid with a haze that didn't burn off until mid morning. Even a year after Katrina's landfall there were still areas that had not been cleaned up and others where restoration had begun and then been abandoned. We photographed and spoke with optimistic people who pledged they were going to rebuild. All during this time a familiar question — one that had been with me when I photographed the wake of Ivan — crept back into my thoughts: why would anyone want to come back here to live after having their lives so torn apart?
This question was answered for me on our last afternoon of photographing. David, Emma and I had stopped at an abandoned convenience store off Beach Boulevard in Pass Christian to photograph. While they wandered off to explore I stayed back and looked up and down the beach through the trees and then out on to the gulf. The live oaks that remained were naturally trimmed by the storm and were starting to grow back, the beach was clean, almost snow white, and the gulf was a glowing deep blue. The air was thick and the heat stifling but the place was beautiful. As devastating as Katrina was it was a natural occurrence that people have to accept if they want to live on the Gulf Coast. During this stop I came to understand why they would rebuild and realized, if I were a resident of the Gulf Coast, I too would stay.
This question was answered for me on our last afternoon of photographing. David, Emma and I had stopped at an abandoned convenience store off Beach Boulevard in Pass Christian to photograph. While they wandered off to explore I stayed back and looked up and down the beach through the trees and then out on to the gulf. The live oaks that remained were naturally trimmed by the storm and were starting to grow back, the beach was clean, almost snow white, and the gulf was a glowing deep blue. The air was thick and the heat stifling but the place was beautiful. As devastating as Katrina was it was a natural occurrence that people have to accept if they want to live on the Gulf Coast. During this stop I came to understand why they would rebuild and realized, if I were a resident of the Gulf Coast, I too would stay.
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About Todd Bertolaet:
Todd Bertolaet is professor of photography and the photography program coordinator at Florida A&M University, where he has taught since 1986. He is the author of Crescent Rivers: Waterways of Florida's Big Bend (University Press of Florida, 1998). He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in photography, three Individual Artist Fellowships from the State of Florida, and numerous Knight Foundation faculty development grants. His photographs have been published in numerous magazines and exhibited throughout the United States. His most recent project, Southern Autographics, incorporates hand-written drawings and text with photographic imagery to create narratives of historical, environmental, and personal significance. Many of his pieces are photographic collages that juxtapose the South's once-natural landscape with images of how human activity has altered that landscape. Bertolaet's drawings and texts, hand-written in white ink on the photographs black margins, are variously wry, poignant, and tongue-in-cheek disingenuous. The result is a body of work that is unfailingly beautiful and often funny and sad at the same time.
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