where do you start?

A couple of weeks ago I traveled to Plaquemines Parish in southern Louisiana to view the effects of Katrina. There is nothing left. 99 percent of the buildings I saw was either destroyed completely, or damaged beyond repair. Literally 99 percent. The number is actually probably higher than that, as I wasn't able to count all the buildings that have disappeared.

As we drove through the devastation, one of my colleagues kept asking the question, "where do you start?" Though he was speaking specifically about the cleanup process, the question holds true in the broader sense as well. So complete is the destruction, with debris littering the landscape that the recovery process will take years.

It isn't really possible to convey the scope of the disaster, its magnitude. These four pictures are not aberrations, but the norm. I have dozens just like them, and could have had hundreds more, but at some point, I stopped shooting. I had become inured to the damage, and it is now impossible to conceive of what the vibrant communities must have looked like just three months ago.