11/03/2011
The Gulf Coast Echo Project
“This region has lost its richest asset, the people who were filled with heritage, legacy, and inspiration.”
“People will never forget that day and the date it happened. Families were killed and misplaced and everythingpeople cherished was gone.”
“We are living in darkness, with no clean water to drink or to take a bath, and people are living in trailers next totheir homes that used to be there.”
Seventeen months after the 17th Street Canal breached and flooded 80% of New Orleans, “belief is hard to find.” Gulf Coast Echo is an exhibition of Gulf Coast photographs from the 1980’s and “Now” -- pre- and post-Hurricane Katrina. A book is in development with a international publisher. The publisher has a major marketing plan for the Gulf Coast Echo photography book. A percentage of book sales to be donated to Hurricane Katrina relief organizations.
Facts
A year after the storm, only half of New Orleans’ 455,000 residents had returned.
Hurricane Katrina cost the United States an estimated $110 billion in damages, which made it the costliest hurricane ever in US history.
It has been reported that 275,000 homes were lost as a result of the hurricane -- ten times as many as from any other natural disaster in US history.
Why Now?
To keep alive the memory of a world-famous regional culture and lifestyle that have been wiped out.
To raise awareness on the Gulf Coast tragedy. A visual show will bring it back in the eyes of the public and media as it is already deemed “old news.”
To support efforts to meet the long-term needs of displaced persons and survivors who have lost everything.
Our Mission:
As the Gulf Coast begins to get back on their feet, a process which has taken years and the collaborative efforts of many friends, neighbors, volunteers, and victims, those affected by the storm begin to rediscover the hope that was destroyed in August of 2005. Their hope, however, doesn't come in the form of FEMA trailers or canned goods or material donations, but in the realization that people across the nation still care about their situation. It comes in knowing the rest of the world hasn't forgotten the tragedy and the loss these victims live with everyday.
Hurricane Katrina wasn't a localized problem; it was a national and global reminder of the devastating and demoralizing effects of poverty which plague even the United States. Americans live in the most powerful, modernized country in the world, yet our friends in the Gulf Coast live in the equivalent of a third world country. They live with sewage backed up in their yards, unemployed and unable to feed their families, with all of their belongings destroyed. Our government provides them with poisoned trailers, barely a step up from their own desecrated homes. The entire nation feels the effects of the drooping economy, rising gas prices, and high unemployment rates, but no one more than residents of the Gulf Coast who lost their families and their livelihoods in the largest hurricane to hit the United States. Now more than ever they need the support and the love of their entire American family. We are the support system that can restore the Gulf Coast’s culture, which bubbled out of the Mississippi River Delta and blew in with the warm Gulf breeze.
The communities that line the banks of the Gulf of Mexico—Mobile, Bayou La Batre, Pascagoula, Biloxi, and New Orleans—knew a different lifestyle, a slow meandering but deeply charming lifestyle. Many Americans see the South as a backwards community that still feels the weight of the Jim Crow laws, but the real truth is that these communities absolutely welcome the over-the-top personalities that populate the South. The cultural charm of the Gulf Coast was washed away with the homes and the lives of these residents, and it is this unique culture that we want to honor with Gulf Coast Echo. Even though the Gulf Coast has proved its resilience everyday since Katrina flooded its streets, they still need our help. They deserve our care and our support, and they need to know that we will never stop fighting to restore their dignity and their lifestyle and their unique cultural identity.
We have put together a series of photographs which exposes the incredible loss of so many folks on the Gulf Coast. But these photographs also serve to bring the Hurricane relief efforts back into our memory and into the spotlight. With Gulf Coast Echo, we remember that the problems of poverty don't only exist in Africa, the Middle East, and other third world countries, but here in OUR home. And the love and support that we offer to the Gulf Coast is the only source of hope for these victims. Our support, both financial and emotional, has the power to restore the Gulf Coast to its former splendor.
