The Hurricane…
At the end of the millennium’s first decade, it’s natural for us to want to pause, before entering a new era, and to look back to the recent past in order to reflect upon the events that have shaped our present. I first saw the horrific legacy of Hurricane Katrina on television, late in August 2005, whilst sitting in the living room of my friend Fanie Jason’s home in Cape Town. Personally, it was quite a surreal time in my life, made even more so by the vision of a broken people, lost and swirling within a city waiting for help that was slow to come.
Many moving images surfaced from that time. Thomas Dworzak’s ‘Ghost Town’ images stand out for one, as does Spike Lee’s film ‘When the Levees Broke’. But it is easy to forget that for many, for the survivors at least, that the legacy of August 2005 is still real and still present within lives slowly and belatedly being rebuilt.
I’m fighting the urge to enter into a polemic on race and injustice here but I write this post just to highlight the beautiful and much lauded work of the designer Dee Adams and her attempts to help those in need. Whilst her work usually graces the pages of Vogue and Wallpaper, and homes across the world, she has for 2010, produced a series of posters to celebrate the city of New Orleans and its people. The city that she says contains the ‘..most cherished memories of [her] life…”
All proceeds from the sale of her posters go to charity and will help those still living with what happened on that day in August 2005 when the Levees broke. A number of the images below can also be seen on her excellent blog. All images below are copyright Dee Adams - for more information on this series and her work contact her here.
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