Capturing
the soul of
The Big Easy

It was a warm Tuesday night, humid and thick. I closed my eyes temporarily, pretending I was asleep as I often do, just to open them again and look at my situation anew. I was in the backseat of a car speeding over a bridge, with the head of a 3-year-old fast asleep in my lap. I realized I hardly knew the driver, Eddie McGee, and his girlfriend in the passenger seat whom I had only met a few hours earlier. I felt very grateful that they had accepted me enough to allow me to sit with their son, Eddie Jr., in the backseat. I had entered their story and was very blessed to be in their car with such great responsibility slowly breathing on me in the form of a life created by the two strangers sitting directly in front. In that instant I knew this was something to hold on to: A moment so heavy it hurt to analyze at the time; something to be digested later. It was April 18, 2006. I had been in New Orleans for four days and I still had six days to go.

I had met Eddie McGee on the plane ride to New Orleans where he was flying back to see how his family was doing. He relocated to Dallas, as so many Katrina refugees had, but when I met him it was at D/FW Airport, where he was sitting by himself waiting to board. I told him what I was trying to do; that I was a documentary photographer, and I wanted to go document the city I had fallen in love with several years ago and its subsequent, if ineloquent, recovery. I felt I could do some good by exposing the truth of the situation down there; however pretentious that might sound. Eddie seemed quite open to it, giving me his phone number and allowing me to document his situation once I got settled in The Big Easy.

To be settled is to be comfortable, and that I was. Thanks to my good friend Amanda Witt, I had been set up with a place to stay in New Orleans: a 96-year-old house owned by an 80-year-old woman. She was a very strong woman by the name of Katherine Senter (but call her anything but “Kit,” and you will get a short, abrupt, interruptive response to call her, well ... Kit). She is a short-stacked, well-educated piece of work, built like a tank and completely involved with the goings-on in New Orleans.

The house she welcomed me into reeked of history, telling a story with every step on her ancient wooden floors. Upon arrival, she accepted me whole-heartedly and immediately gave me a tour of the most damaged parts of the city. This helped me in the coming days beyond my understanding at that. I owe a lot of my success from the trip to her generosity and continuous late-night conversations, ones that I will surely miss as I recollect this trip in the years to come. I set off the next day, determined to learn the crippled public transportation system and to put myself in the shoes of those who have suffered, if only temporarily. I found a city severely handicapped by the destruction and subsequent bureaucracy, limping along in the severe heat of late April just trying to get around in another day of despair. Although the city had seen its fair share of destructive storms and floods all over the city, residents simply called Katrina “The Storm.” The fact that Hurricane Katrina has earned that title above all other catastrophic events ever to hit New Orleans says a lot about the destructive power still resonating in the hearts of its citizens.

The weight of troubled minds was intense as I rode the bus all over the city, speaking to everyone I saw while trying to get a glimpse of the city as a whole. The amount of diversity in their stories was monumental yet always universal, ending with the fact that they had lost everything. I require constant interaction in order to photograph, allowing the subject to speak freely and without restraint before I even attempt to raise my lens. I felt they had suffered enough. The last thing they needed was some skinny photographer from another state stealing their images to pay some kind of odd homage to a city he’s only previously known in short scheduled intervals. I was there for 10 days but it felt like a million.

I ran out of money by the eighth day and, when there were no bus lines to certain parts of the city, I walked, sometimes up to 12 miles a day. Empathy is the key to understanding and caring in this world, and I had a job to do. I realized this trip was unlike any other I had previously taken to this place and that I had only one chance as a photographer to represent it correctly. I love people and the way they seem to carry on in the face of despair, hopelessness and the continuous uphill struggle of everyday life. Nowhere have I seen this perseverance and strength more than in the souls of the seemingly distraught and the falsely broken in New Orleans, La. All you have to do is just ask someone who was there during that event, and anyone of them will tell you in their own “Big Easy” way: The good Lord giveth and the good Lord taketh away, but it is he who fights and run away that will live to fight another day.

— Richard Sharum is a professional photographer and staff photographer for the News-Register. To stay up to date on his latest work go to www.myspace.com/shutterpoint.