Hurricane Katrina, 2 years on: portraits by Clayton James Cubitt
Two years ago today, Hurricane Katrina destroyed thousands of homes, business, and lives in America.
Photographer Clayton James Cubitt has personal ties to the Gulf Coast, and his portraits of Katrina survivors are featured in this month's issue of Eyemazing, the international journal of contemporary photography, along with an interview. Snip:
CM: Where were they taken? All of them except for three seem to be taken in a studio-like setting. Why did you choose that rather than shooting the subjects in the context of their surroundings at the time?Link. Here are more Katrina-related photos from Clayton: Link.CJC: The studio portraits were taken in a former school gymnasium that had been cleared out and cleaned, and was serving as a distribution point for aid in the small Gulf Coast town of Pearlington, Mississippi, which was ground zero for Hurricane Katrina. The whole town was under 30 feet of storm surge, and had to fend for itself with no outside help for almost ten days.
I wanted to shoot many portraits in a studio context in order to separate these images from the flood of photojournalistic images that came out of New Orleans. I think people have become so jaded as visual consumers that when they see a photograph that's obviously reportage, they immediately shove it into a safe little compartment called "other." This happens in Haiti, or Africa, or Pakistan, not America, and all the images look the same, with the victims of the tragedy filling the same role, that of making Americans feel relieved that they live in America. Well, this is America.
I wanted to short-circuit that automatic filing. I wanted to present these people with the same care and respect I would use when on assignment shooting a portrait of a celebrity or a politician. I think it allows for a lingering appreciation of what they've been through, in small doses, rather than in an overwhelming image of total disaster, which is very hard to really absorb in the two seconds most viewers allot a photograph.
But mostly, I wanted to treat them with the respect they deserve, but never get.
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Man, I really like the pictures Siege takes.
To me, it seems like this guy wants to sanitize the situation. I don't think that respecting people who lived through katrina means removing them from the harsh envronment in which they were placed. My mother is quietly going insane in a fema trailer as the only inhabitant on her block. The crack heads on the next block were rubbed out with an ak-47 that blew the entire side off their fema trailer and the cops didn't even come out to take a body count until the next day. The guy inside bled to death, even though my mom was on the phone with the cops when the gunmen drove past her. Tell me why a picture of some dude in a generic setting is going to do this tragedy some measure of justice.
"How many gunshots did you hear?"
"Um, it sounded like 'Aht-aht-aht-aht-aht-aht-aht'"
"So, a lot?"
I took some portraits too, although I took them all during and right after the storm, and not just in New Orleans.
tobymorris.com (click on katrina)
-Thats awful about your mother's situation. Those fema towns are probably some of the worst living situations I have ever seen in America outside of the Chicago's Cabrini Green or Robert Taylor Homes in the early 90s. I hope things get better for her.
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Hey, whoah there - I think if you read the whole piece or understood the backstory, you'd realize that this is way off base. I'm very sorry about your mom, and you certainly have a right to an opinion. But Clayton is a friend of mine, and I know also that he has deep roots to the community represented in these pictures. His family lost pretty much everything they had in Katrina, which wasn't much, and that place is his home.
I think the attempt here was to look at these people in a different way, just as some people fought hard over language: "survivors," not "victims."
Is placing the subject in front of a blank background for a portrait somehow less honest than photographing them in the midst of ruin? Bah, no. Any more than using a portrait lens, and focusing only on the face is any less honest than photographing wide angle, and capturing all the rubble. It's a different way of looking, and he's entitled to it, and I think the world is better for having the ability to see through that lens.
From looking at these pictures, it seems that only white people felt the brunt of Katrina's wrath.
As I clicked through, I kept thinking "Where are all the black folks?"
I certainly hope the full collection gives a more accurate depiction of who was touched by this tragic event.
Not everyone who went through the storm and aftermath wants to be remembered at their worst. Living in the Gulf Coast at the time, I quickly grew sick of the media barrage showing survivors at the worst physical and mental state they'd ever been in. I don't know anyone who would have wanted to be remembered only by the severity of such sad state that only reflected what was really a small glimpse of many of their lives.
I've seen very few portrait photographers do anything but shoot the same type of predatory, degrading photos you might expect from a clueless first-day photojournalism student taking a picture of a depressed bum. Kudos to Mr. Cubitt for looking into the ways in which his subjects want to be remembered, and in a manner that more likely reflects the tough and determined nature of these survivors. It's refreshing.