Two Years and Two Hundred Square Feet
Chuck explained to me that he had been living in his trailer with his three-legged dog, Spunk, for going on two years. He’s a marble worker and tiler by trade, offering his services to his neighbors that are getting back on their feet and rebuilding their houses. He has even made a poker table for the governor of Louisiana. His father built the house that sits next to his trailer decades earlier. He had grown up in it, raised his children in it, and couldn’t bear to leave it. He said in passing, “Two years and two hundred square feet…” That’s where this project derives its name.
This essay documents the transition from post-Katrina New Orleans to the rebuilding of New Orleans. Initially, this essay’s focus was to be a sensitive retelling of the state of New Orleans and the under-represented population that occupies FEMA trailers, but the scope of the project shifted since the last of the FEMA trailers left New Orleans. I never intended for this essay to be a documentation of tragedy, or for my travels to be considered disaster tourism, a practice that I consider ethically ambiguous. Not all stories are happy, but, by the same measure, not all stories are sad. This series of photographs conveys, as truthfully as I can, the stories of the people and places documented in this visual essay.
