Washed Away
"Engulfed by Katrina," a group show with 38 photographs, aims to remember the displaced and the dead.
photography
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When Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast in 2005, Americans (including those in the government) swore never to forget the displaced and the dead. But as the floodwaters subsided and the so-called "refugees" were continually refused aid, housing and insurance claims, it became clear that the promise had been broken.
"Engulfed by Katrina," a traveling exhibit on view at the African American Museum in Philadelphia, aims to renew that promise. The group show features 38 photographs taken of the Gulf Coast before and after the hurricane, images that reveal a startling shift both in the landscape of the region and in the minutiae of daily life. The 13 nationally known photographers who participated (some of the many who flocked to the region after the storm) have sought to combat the national tendency toward forgetting, and the ease with which we allow tragedy to move from sensation to abstraction. The incongruity which these images capture (a school bus abandoned in a ditch, a stained family portrait) forces the viewer to confront the incongruity of the event itself. How, in one of the richest countries in the world, could some of its poorest inhabitants be so completely abandoned?
Sometimes a tragedy is most apparent in its details. In "Open Book," a photograph by Sara Macel, a rust stained, water-logged notebook, possibly a diary, lies on its binding amidst other debris. "TV," by Wyatt Gallery, shows a television screen stained almost beyond recognition. Aside from its troubling beauty, the image invokes the media's frequent distortion of events.
Given the immense suffering that Katrina caused and is still causing, it's easy to feel disconcerted by the aesthetic beauty of many of these photographs. Some may even question the photographers' motives. But by avoiding cheap, shock-value images, they seek to create a monument to what was lost, and to raise again the questions that were asked in 2005. By showing what was discarded and forgotten, they force us to remember.
May 11-Aug. 5, African American Museum in Philadelphia, 701 Arch St., 215-574-0380, www.aampmuseum.org.
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