Falling down in Holy Cross.
Long term readers of Storyteller know this place. It’s on the far downriver side of Holy Cross. You’ve been inside. This was the place with green wooden walls and the old American flag on the wall. Remember? I’m a creature of habit so I decided to cruise by and see if anything changed. It did. The flag was torn off the wall and tossed in a pile on the floor. You can’t do that to an American Flag, So I, er, liberated it. You didn’t read that here.
So.
For those of you who are new to this blog, here’s a quick bit of background. We had a big hurricane. Katrina. You know that. But, sometimes people who aren’t from New Orleans sort of forget. That’s natural. Bad things happen on a daily basis sometimes. Many of you watched in amazement as the city flooded. CNN was good for covering that. It’s likely that you saw the Lower Ninth Ward pretty much be wiped off the map. You probably didn’t see the neighborhood closer to the Mississippi River in any of that coverage. It flooded. But the water didn’t rush in as it did next to the Industrial Canal. Homes were destroyed. Lives were changed. But the area was recoverable. That area is on the river side of St. Claude Avenue. It is called Holy Cross. It is named after a Catholic church and school. It’s a very different kind of New Orleans. As you get closer to the river and the levee, the neighborhood almost has a country feel. And, a lot of it has been restored. New people have repopulated the area. There is a pretty nice vibe in the neighborhood. But, as you travel more downriver, things aren’t so good. There are still a lot of abandoned and boarded up buildings and houses.
This is one of them. A few months ago I stopped here and went inside. That’s what I’m referring to when I talk about the American flag. At the time, it was hung on the wall. This time, the low winter light got the better of me. I worked from the outside, in. This is the result. Oh, the rainbow? Photographer’s trick. If you stop down your f-stop as small as you can and shoot directly into bright light, like the sun, this is what you get.
Those brick buildings that look so nice? Jackson Barracks. It as a Louisiana National Guard installation that sits squarely on the border of Orleans and St. Bernard Parishes. It took on a lot of water during the storm. I think around fifteen feet. But, it is a necessary base, so a lot of money was poured into it after the water was drained out of it. I’m not sure why. It’s active. But, not very busy. But, the old military collections have been restored as of a few months ago. That’s fun to look at. You can see a tank. A cannon. A Huey helicopter. And other stuff.
Filed under: Color, Colorful, Laskowitzpictures.com, Photographer, Photographing, Photographs, Photography, Pictures, Ray Laskowitz Tagged: Abandoned, City, Flooded, History, Holy Cross, House, hurricane katrina, Jackson Barracks, Louisiana, Lower Ninth Ward, National Guard, Neighborhood, New Orleans, Orleans Parish, Photography Technique, Rainbow, St. Bernard Parish, Street, Sunlight, Urban 
