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BOOKS
NEW FROM THNOC
The Katrina Decade:
Images of an Altered City
by David C. Spielman, photographer, with essays by Jack Davis and John H. Lawrence
The Historic New Orleans Collection, 2015
$39.95, hardcover, 9x9 inches, 168 pages, 138 black-and-white images
ISBN: 978-0-917860-68-3
Available in July at The Shop at The Collection, www.hnoc.org/shop, and local booksellers
Ten Years
In The Katrina Decade, photographer David C. Spielman captures quotidian corners of the post-Katrina world.
As New Orleans prepares for the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and the levee breaches, THNOC and the photographer David G. Spielman offer a counterpoint to the kind of disaster-renewal iconography that has come to represent the storm in mass media. Instead of depicting abject devastation and heartwarming rebirth, The Katrina Decade: Images of an Altered City captures the quiet remnants of Katrina’s wake. Houses and buildings linger under invasive vines and settling soil, inviting readers to meditate on the lives of former occupants—where are they now, and will they return?—and the complicated nature of rebuilding and revival. Featuring 138 black-and-white images taken throughout the city, The Katrina Decade represents the struggle of all New Orleans neighborhoods and residents to reclaim their right to thrive.
I he July launch of the book precedes an exhibition of the same name, to open August 22 at THNOC’s Laura Simon Nelson Galleries for Louisiana Art. In a recent conversation with THNOC Quarterly, Spielman discussed the artistic process behind the book.
—	MOLLY REID
How did the idea for the book take shape over the years?
My first book, Katrinaville Chronicles [Images and Observations from a New OrUaru Photographer], came about because I stayed through the storm. I didn’t have an assignment or anything, but it became apparent that I needed to document what happened to our city. I’m not a hard-news photographer; I don’t shoot floating, bloating bodies. What I wanted to capture was a real awareness of how fragile everything was.
The book came out, and the news media [covering the storm] sort of faded. I realized that in our instantaneous world, you never really get to look at the long-haul process of rebuilding. I wanted to approach something on a long-term basis.
6 The Historic New Orleans Collection Quarterly