Chris Jordan In Katrina's Wake
Phone Book, 2005
Remains of a Home, 2005
Lingerie Store, 2005
"Welcome to the new Louis Armstrong School", 2005
Remains of a Home, 2005
Piano in a Church, 2005
Ball Field, 2005
Globe in a Classroom, 2005
Living Room Floor, 2005
Refrigerator on Franklin Avenue, 2005
Artist's statement
This series, photographed in New Orleans in November and December of 2005, portrays the cost of Hurricane Katrina on a personal scale. Although the subjects are quite different from those in my earlier Intolerable Beauty series, this project is motivated by the same concerns about our runaway consumerism.
There is evidence to suggest that Katrina was not an entirely natural event like an earthquake or tsunami. The 2005 hurricane season’s extraordinary severity can be linked to global warming, which America contributes to in disproportionate measure through our extravagant consumer and industrial practices. Never before have the cumulative effects of our consumerism become so powerfully focused into a visible form, like the sun’s rays narrowed through a magnifying glass. Almost 300,000 Americans lost everything they owned in the Katrina disaster. The question in my mind is whether we are all responsible in some degree. The hurricane’s damage has been further amplified by other human causes, including failures of preparedness and response on many levels; existing poverty conditions; levee problems that were mired in political manoeuvrings; poor environmental and wetlands practices that left some areas more vulnerable; and the conspicuous absence of federal resources that were already being used in the Bush Administration’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
From that perspective, my hope is that these images might encourage some reflection on the part that we each play, and the loss that we all suffer, when a preventable catastrophe of this magnitude happens to the people of our own country. Katrina has illuminated our interconnectedness and it makes our personal accountability as members of a conscious society ever more difficult to deny.
About the photographer
1963, United States
American
Seattle, United States
Chris Jordan is a corporate lawyer turned award-winning photographer. He has exhibited prodigiously in both solo and group exhibitions worldwide. In 2007 he was invited to participate in the Envisioning Change exhibition at the Nobel Peace Center, Norway where he also won a Green Leaf Award. His other awards include a Lannan Foundation Grant (2006) and the Gary Horowitz Award (2004). He has published two books – In Katrina’s Wake: Portraits of Loss From an Unnatural Disaster (2006) and Intolerable Beauty catalogue (2005).
Water shortlist
Benoit Aquin, The Chinese 'Dust Bowl', 2006-2007
Edward Burtynsky, Selected works, 1996-2007
Jesus Abad Colorado, Landscapes and Battles: Two wings wait for the end of the tragedy, 1995-2002
Thomas Joshua Cooper, The World's Edge - The Atlantic Basin Project, 1998-2006
Sebastian Copeland, Antarctica - The Global Warning, 2006
Christian Cravo, Waters of Hope, Rivers of Tears, 1995-2008
Lynn Davis, Ice, 1988-2007
Carl De Keyzer, Moments before the Flood, 2006-2007
Reza Deghati, War and Peace, 1994-2006
Susan Derges, Eden & The Observer and the Observed, 1991-2008
Malcolm Hutcheson, Lahore's Waste Water Problem, 2008
Chris Jordan, In Katrina's Wake: Portraits of Loss from an Unnatural Disaster, 2005
David Maisel, Terminal Mirage & The Lake Project, 2001-2004
Mary Mattingly, Second Nature and Time Has Fallen Asleep, 2004-2008
Robert Polidori, After The Flood, 2005-2006
Roman Signer, Body of Work, 1976-2000
Jules Spinatsch, Snow Management, 2004-2008
Munem Wasif, Water Tragedy: Climate Refugee of Bangladesh, 2007