I had an "All Access" pass into the City of New Orleans today and after going through a few "Checkpoint Charlies" got into City Park. I was with a photographer friend in a four wheel drive jeep, the kind that could jump fallen trees and navigate around impossible barriers.
We were the only two humans in the Park and no photograph can do justice to the destruction and desolation. We stayed in the Park for about one and one-half hours and I constantly searched for the swans and cygnets, to no avail. The place where they were born, Swan Island, and the connecting water areas seem to have been the hardest hit and the area where water remained the longest.
We felt as though we were on an island of the dead, eerie and unbelieving what we were seeing. We could not cover all the waterways and we left before we felt our health was in real danger-we should have had on masks as the water and the air were so polluted.
I will do a gallery on all of it before the night is over titled "New Orleans City Park After Hurricane Katrina.
The bridge is one I have photographed many times but the colors you are seeing are not fall colors but colors of destruction from Hurricane Katrina.
We also photographed a portion of Metairie where water has only recently receded, water that came in from a break in a canal levee. It too is unreal and unbelievable. I photographed homes of my friends where just weeks ago we talked and laughed and looked at flower gardens and grandchildren.
Everyone we saw in that Metairie area had the same look on their faces; walking through a nightmare. The water lines on the houses were very noticeable and piles of antique furniture and family belongings were piled on the street--the smell was unbearable and the heartbreak enormous.