Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Day 2 - Miss Gertrude LeBlanc

Recap:

So I refused to be lazy this morning and got up early to do some sunrise shooting! We headed to the lower 9th ward, in the neighborhood where Brad Pitt and Make It Right are rebuilding homes. It was crazy, just crazy. First thing I noticed were the shells all over the ground. Shells? When the waters flooded the neighborhood and then receded they deposited shells everywhere. So strange . . . The houses were completely wiped away by Katrina, and in their place she left shells. Not quite an even trade-off . . .


We met a Miss Gertrude LeBlanc while shooting in the lower 9th. She sat on the front porch of her little yellow house, watching the world go by. I think meeting her was the most prominent event of this trip for me. What she said, as simple as it was, will never leave me. She opened my eyes to the true strength and beauty of humans. There is no way I can ever completely understand New Orleans and what these people have been through, but because of people like her I can grasp it just a little better.


The former steps to Miss Gertrude LeBlanc's porch


This is a memorial created by the owner of the trailers, to his mother and 3 yr old granddaughter who were killed in the storm.

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