Eyes of the Storm: Hurricane Katrina and Rita The Photographic Story - Softcover

Dallas Morning News,

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1589793595 ISBN 13: 9781589793590

Publisher: Taylor Trade Publishing, 2005

Synopsis

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.

About this title

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.

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.
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About this edition

• Publisher: Taylor Trade Publishing
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 1589793595
• ISBN 13: 9781589793590
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256