Untitled [New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, 2005] Possibly 2005 - 2010

This photograph, taken by Richard Misrach in 2005, shows a street in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina. The palette is muted, as if the colours have been washed out by water, and the scene is full of debris. I wonder, what was Misrach thinking when he took this picture? How did he decide where to stand and what to include in the frame? There's a huge tree that has fallen across a house, like it's been placed there by a giant, but then there are these smaller, more intimate details, like the trash cans overflowing with garbage, or a blue plastic barrel on the ground. All this texture helps us feel the weight of what happened here. Misrach's wider project seems to be about how we, as humans, affect the landscape, and in turn, how the landscape affects us. Photography, like painting, can be an act of bearing witness, and a way of making sense of what we see and feel.