Eyes of the Storm: Hurricane Katrina and Rita The Photographic Story [Paperback]

The Dallas Morning News (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 22, 2005

The Dallas Morning News had more staff photographers on the scene than any other news organization when Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast at the end of August and beginning of September. These Pulitzer Prize-winning photographers caught every aspect of the storm and its aftermath on film and many of those photos will be seen for the first time in this stirring work of photojournalism at its best. Nearly 270 images-culled from over 3,000 taken before, during, and after Katrina struck-capture the heartbreak of hundreds of thousands of people suddenly made homeless, Gulf Coast towns completely wiped out by wind and storm surge, and, ultimately, scenes of hope as people return, rebuild, and rebound from one of the nation's worst natural disasters. Looking past the political and bureaucratic squabbles that seem to have dominated the news at the expense of human suffering, the book's focus is squarely on the people of Katrina-both rescuer and rescued, old and young, helpful and heroic. For every scene of utter devastation there is a corresponding image of the will to survive, such as a church service in a parking lot, or a horse seeking refuge from a flooded paddock by climbing on to the front porch of a house. Separations as well as reunions are captured in moving images that will endure alongside classic photographs from America's previous calamities, and will draw comparisons to the work of Arthur Rothstein, Dorothea Lange, and Walker Evans. Eyes of the Storm is not only a graphic visual record of nature at its most malevolent, but also a testament to the ultimate triumph of the human spirit.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The top editors at the Dallas Morning News, accustomed to dire warnings about killer storms that never materialize, imagined a weakened Hurricane Katrina would make an anti-climactic landfall. But they positioned their teams of photographers and reporters before the storm hit, a decision that helped produce some of the most evocative images of the cataclysm that devastated the Gulf Coast. Those photographs, along with pictures from the succeeding September storm, Hurricane Rita, fill this chronicle of the events of late summer of 2005. But it is Katrina photos from New Orleans and its environs that dominate this volume. The opening shots document the monstrous traffic jams endured by those who fled Katrina's approach and the dismissive partying of some never-say-die denizens of the French Quarter before the levees burst and a post-apocalyptic chaos descended on the city. Every photograph is memorable, but some are standouts, such as the shot of a woman whose husband's hand rests on her shoulder, their fingers touching, or the aerial shot of two dogs as they "inspect" a corpse. The book concludes with short biographical sketches of the photojournalists and brief accounts of the stories behind images. Readers would do well to pick up this catalogue of the heart-rending scenes that outraged the nation and the world-and altered the lives of both the subjects and the photographers.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author

The Dallas Morning News, winner of eight Pulitzer Prizes, is owned by the BELO Corporation, owner of thirteen newspapers and twenty-three television stations throughout the country.

The Dallas Morning News, winner of eight Pulitzer Prizes, is owned by the BELO Corporation, owner of thirteen newspapers and twenty-three television stations throughout the country.

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Taylor Trade Publishing; 1st Taylor Trade Pub. Ed edition (November 22, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1589793595
• ISBN-13: 978-1589793590
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 6.7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,323,274 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Ring (and Sting) of Truth, June 30, 2006

By 

Book Babe - See all my reviews

This review is from: Eyes of the Storm: Hurricane Katrina and Rita The Photographic Story (Paperback)

I was shown this book today, by a woman who survived 10 days in the attic of her flooded home in New Orleans after the levy broke. As we leafed through the book together, tears rolled down her face. Pointing to the photos, she occasionally remarked, "This man was my neighbor," or "See her? That's my friend." She recounted horror after horror that she had endured, even wondering if those dogs in the picture were the same ones she saw gathered around a man's body--they weren't just inspecting it. My friend stayed in her house because she refused to leave her pets--a dog, birds, and fish--behind, and it almost cost her own life. Her photo appears in the book too. She looks like she's flashing the finger, but she was, in fact, holding it up to a medic so he could take a sample of blood after she had the first of two heart attacks in the storm's aftermath. She might as well be flashing it, though. She has nothing good whatsoever to say about the way the Bush government handled the crisis. I can't judge whether a book captures the reality of a situation unless I've been there myself. She lived through Katrina and the flood, though, and she says this book shows exactly the way it was. I believe her.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Eyes of the Storm: The Story in Pictures of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, January 31, 2006

By 

N. Bailey (New Orleans, LA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Eyes of the Storm: Hurricane Katrina and Rita The Photographic Story (Paperback)

Excellent review and awesome pictures of the destruction that Hurricanes Katrina and Rita left. Some are very graphic. Very emotional.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Eyes of the Storm, a review by Deborah Kossich, Fort Dearborn-Chicago Photo Forum, March 20, 2006

By 

Deborah Lee Kossich "Digimagination" (Palm Bay, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Eyes of the Storm: Hurricane Katrina and Rita The Photographic Story (Paperback)

"Oh, the humanity, the humanity!"

Herb Morrison, a newscaster for radio station WLS who was covering the arrival of the German airship Hindenburg as it docked at Lakehurst, NJ in 1937, wailed those famous words as the dirigible exploded and was consumed by flames within minutes. Morrison made no attempt to conceal his shock and horror at the tragedy unfolding right before his eyes. I can't help but wonder how Mr. Morrison would have reacted had he witnessed the nightmare that occurred in New Orleans and the surrounding environs in the late summer of 2005.

Eyes of the Storm, a book of images made by the staff of The Dallas Morning News, tells an epic tale of shock and horror, hope and caring, survival and ultimate triumph in pictures so poignant and powerful that additional comment is all but superfluous.

Shock and Horror

It all started innocently enough, in the usual manner of tropical systems. A wave of wind far out in the mid-Atlantic coalesced into a slowly swirling depression and strengthened into a tropical storm that was given the name Katrina. Predictions were that Katrina would reach Category-1 strength, as defined by the Saffer-Simpson scale, with rotating winds in the 74-95 mph range and probably lose steam as it crossed Florida.

But apparently no one told Katrina. After emerging into the Gulf of Mexico, the storm exploded almost literally overnight, briefly reaching Category-5 status (winds 155+ mph), easily the most powerful storm of the young century, taking dead aim at New Orleans! And the nightmare was just beginning, for three weeks later Hurricane Rita, taking nearly the same track as Katrina, struck the Texas border, just to the west.

Songs of Sorrow

August 29, 2005, high noon local time. Katrina has roared inland after coming ashore earlier in the day, devastating the Gulf coast from Mississippi to the Texas border and effectively turning New Orleans into an arm of Lake Ponchartrain.

If any image from the immediate aftermath of Katrina's rampage can be called iconic, it's the one on page 19. A classic composition puts a man in a red shirt, clinging to the roof of his home, squarely in the viewer's face. An in an almost laughably ironic comment on modern technology's effectiveness - or lack thereof - in the face of Nature's wrath, a satellite dish perches on the house next door, in the opposite corner of the frame.

"Almost, thy plausibility/Induces my belief." From Indian Summer, a poem by Emily Dickinson, this line is the perfect epigram to an image spread across pages 24 and 25, showing what appears to be a collection of tiny rectangular tiles, laid out as if to be placed in a mosaic. But look more closely. Do you see the flood waters? Can you see what those "tiles" really are - not tiles at all, but the roofs of homes in a flooded neighborhood?

On page 53, in Gulfport, MS, a lonely wheelchair washed up on the beach makes me wonder what happened to its owner. It also makes me wonder what my own wheelchair-bound mother and I would do - could do - if we should ever have to deal with a Katrina-sized storm ourselves. I try not to dwell too much on that possibility.

And on page 58, in an image as surely iconic in its own way as that shot of three other firefighters and a flag from another nightmare four years earlier, a quartet of firefighters in Biloxi, MS sits in front of ruins that were once the Tivoli Hotel. Their faces, weary and worn, are a study in exhaustion as they await the arrival of police search-and-rescue teams.

And written on the peoples' faces throughout is the whole story. From shock to terror, grief to frustration, exhaustion to resignation - it's all there, as in the face of the woman on page 149, that all-too-familiar mix of exhaustion and resignation accented with just the faintest trace of hope.

Hope and Caring

Those first days after must have been pure hell for those who endured the onslaught of wind enough to fan the flames of Dante's Inferno into a real firestorm and rain enough to put that same Inferno right back out again! And the government response could most kindly have been described as lackluster.

But as they have so many times before - from Florida's Long Hot Summer of 1998 to 9/11 to the "fearsome foursome" of Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne - it was people from all over the country - indeed, all over the continent - who came through for the beleaguered citizens of the Gulf coast. Army and National Guard units, police and fire rescue teams from as far away as Vancouver, BC (pages 118-119), and ordinary Joe and Jane Citizens, all came together to do whatever needed to be done.

Friends, family members and even complete strangers pitched in to help the good folks of New Orleans and the other towns in Mississippi and Louisiana to get back on their feet, donating everything from cash to food and water, helping with search and recovery, locating loved ones living or dead, caring for pets abandoned out of necessity, and hundreds of other tasks of all sizes.

Witness:

The chopper crew airlifting two women and a baby from the roof of a house surrounded by flood waters;

Food and other supplies being passed out in Biloxi, MS;

Rescue teams from Vancouver, BC conducting house-to-house searches looking for anyone needing evacuation.

Such examples abound, too numerous to list them all here.

The Divine Comedy: The Spirit of Survival

What Katrina did to the Gulf coast was horrendous, all right, with Rita making things even worse three weeks later. Devastation everywhere, residents fleeing for their lives by the thousands, perhaps even the millions. And yet ... .

Almost before they had gone, the refugees had started to come back. Cleanup and rebuilding began within a week after Katrina hit, even before Rita struck. Look on page 160; even amidst the subsequent fires and the inevitable rash of looting, a Walgreens drug store reopens for business, albeit under heavy guard. And back on page 132, sailors from the USS Iwo Jima take part in a churchyard cleanup in Biloxi, MS.

And so it goes. Want more? How about the woman on page 100, shouting praises as MREs arrive at Morial Convention Center, so animated one is tempted to join in? The twin sisters on page 114 rejoicing as they prepare to board a plane bound for San Antonio? Or the couples dancing by car light on page 116, red and yellow hues heightening the sense of joie de vivre?

How about those guys on page 135, singin', dancin' and drinkin' it up in a gay pride parade in the French Quarter? Or the man with four of his dogs, getting comfy in the trunk of his own car on page 145 while heading upstate to Baton Rouge with another couple driving? Once again, examples abound.

At its best, photojournalism may readily pass as fine art. Consider:

On page 67, a mother and son wait in the hot, gloomy Superdome, haloed by light coming from a hole in the roof. The light may be seen as hope, perhaps the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. Or perhaps the Light of Heaven, a reassurance that as bad as things are now, this too shall pass and everything will be all right in the end.

A two-page photo spread on pages 68-69 is a classical composition of a man in quasi-symmetry with his own shadow, the diagonal planks serving to heighten the mood of overall tension while he waits to be rescued from his own roof before the floodwaters reach him.

Page 71 calls to mind the Pieta, that famous sculpture of a grieving Mary holding the body of her crucified Son.

Page 109 is an intimate portrait of a small boy being fed by his father. The combination of soft light and sharp focus is what elevates this image from the mundane to high art.

On page 122, two women manage a shower at an artesian spring, the headlights of a car providing the rim light that freezes water droplets in place and turns bodies into semi-abstract silhouettes.

Finally, on page 142, it's classic rule-of-thirds composition combined with bold background color that make this image a real eye-catcher.

The best photojournalistic images can indeed reach the rarefied level of fine art photography. However, the true power of photojournalism lies in its immediacy, an ability unique to the photographic medium in general and to photojournalism in particular, to capture a moment in time that never was before and will never be again. In this case, let's hope we never see such moments as these again.

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A member of the Fort Dearborn-Chicago Photo Forum since 1984, Deborah Kossich counts photojournalism as one of her favorite genres.