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APERTURE
Dave Anderson: One Block
A New Orleans Neighborhood Rebuilds
Text by Chris Rose.
American photographer Dave Anderson's One Block follows the reconstruction of a single New Orleans block in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, delivering a powerful portrait of the storm's ongoing physical and psychological impact on the city and its residents. Using portraiture, still lifes and abstract images, Anderson documents the evolution of both the street and its houses as residents literally rebuild their lives, exploring the very nature of community while testing its resilience. Anderson's compassionate treatment of the neighborhood's straitened financial circumstances and its courageous reconstruction has drawn comparisons to coverage of the Great Depression by Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans and other Farm Security Administration-funded photographers. Seventy years later, between the devastation left by Katrina and the current housing crisis, the stability and permanence of the American home are once again in jeopardy, lending Anderson's record a heightened, timely pertinence. One Block is an extension of Anderson's optimistic belief that the good within each of us is what unites us, as well as his hope that this commonality will afford us the grace to both endure and emerge from our current turmoil.
Featured image is reproduced from Dave Anderson's stunning book of post-Katrina photographs, One Block: A New Orleans Neighborhood Rebuilds.
FROM THE BOOK
"This is an art book. It is a statement. It is a love letter. It is a manifesto. More than anything, it is a photographic homage to the triumph of the human spirit, specifically as it is manifested in that most spirited, yet not-quite-triumphant place, New Orleans... There is something very sturdy and muscular about Dave Anderson’s pictures of people and properties, which is ironic, since all of the structures in this book--and most of the people, quite frankly--got pretty thoroughly smacked down by Hurricane Katrina... One Block is the story of a neighborhood. Then a storm. Then rebuilding the neighborhood after the storm, rebuilding that one block... Away from the direct flow of Katrina’s vengeful path, folks came back to everything bent, broken, or disappeared, and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men set about fixing the place up and calling it home again--this sorry-ass, beat-down backwater Humpty Dumpty town... Home sweet home. One day at a time. Welcome. Be nice or leave. Please curb your dog. Fuck you, Katrina... Here’s something interesting about the people in this book, something you may not divine until the third or fourth study: You know them. All of them. Not by name or anything like that, but you do know the people in this book."
FORMAT: Hbk, 8.75 x 9 in. / 144 pgs / 100 color. LIST PRICE: U.S. $39.95 LIST PRICE: CANADA $50 ISBN: 9781597111430 PUBLISHER: Aperture AVAILABLE: 7/31/2010 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: No longer our product AVAILABILITY: Not Available
Dave Anderson: One Block A New Orleans Neighborhood Rebuilds
Published by Aperture. Text by Chris Rose.
American photographer Dave Anderson's One Block follows the reconstruction of a single New Orleans block in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, delivering a powerful portrait of the storm's ongoing physical and psychological impact on the city and its residents. Using portraiture, still lifes and abstract images, Anderson documents the evolution of both the street and its houses as residents literally rebuild their lives, exploring the very nature of community while testing its resilience. Anderson's compassionate treatment of the neighborhood's straitened financial circumstances and its courageous reconstruction has drawn comparisons to coverage of the Great Depression by Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans and other Farm Security Administration-funded photographers. Seventy years later, between the devastation left by Katrina and the current housing crisis, the stability and permanence of the American home are once again in jeopardy, lending Anderson's record a heightened, timely pertinence. One Block is an extension of Anderson's optimistic belief that the good within each of us is what unites us, as well as his hope that this commonality will afford us the grace to both endure and emerge from our current turmoil.
