The Great Deluge

Areas Covered:
Lower 9th Ward

Today, we got an amazing opportunity to ride along with Times Picayune photographers, some of which were awarded the Pulitzer Prize. I was riding along with David Grunfeld, the assistant photo editor. He showed us around the 9th ward and dropped me off for an hour to met Robert Green, whose trailer I photographed on Monday. An hour later, he came back to pick me up. I had a lot of trouble believing that an hour had gone by, because it felt like it had only been fifteen minutes. Robert answered a lot of the questions I had about the neighborhood he lived in, because he's extremely knowledgeable and as he said, nosey. I felt tremendously privileged to meet him.
After David picked me up again, we went to a crab boil, which was really interesting. The process was explained in great detail, which offered a view of the fishing industry that is not often seen. I was pretty grateful to have that opportunity presented to me. When we got back to the paper, we were given a copy of the Hurricane Katrina book that was made by the Times Picayune photographers, which was really, really amazing, because it's not a cheap book. Hearing their stories was absolutely incredible and really gave me such an alternative view of the storm, which I would have never gotten othrwise. I feel like I understand why Hurricane Katrina was so culturally significant now as a result of meeting these people.