National Geographic: New Orleans shot with Speed Graphic

Andy K · Aug 18, 2006

NG photographer David Burnett shot the aftermath of Katrina using his Speed Graphic.

See the article and links to photographs here.

matt miller · Aug 18, 2006

There are more photos on his website. Some good stuff there.

www.davidburnett.com

Michel Hardy-Vallée · Aug 18, 2006

As much as I like Dave Burnett, I think Sam Portera has much more powerful pictures.

John Bartley · Aug 18, 2006

mhv said:
As much as I like Dave Burnett, I think Sam Portera has much more powerful pictures.

Same here. I liked the NG article, but Sam Porteras work digs deeper inside me.

cheers

mark · Aug 18, 2006

I agree Sam Portera has eclipsed all of the others who have "recorded the devastation".

I compare the Burnett images with Sams or Chris Jordan's with Sams and guess what, niether of those two guys got it right. COuld it be they did not have the connection to the area and there fore are not able to convey the raw emotion given by Sam?

matt miller · Aug 18, 2006

I definitely believe that Sam's connection made his work come from the heart; and it is obvious in his photos. Burnett's photos have a more documentary feel because that is what he was doing there. Sam was living it.

mtbbrian · Aug 18, 2006

I have always liked Burnett's work, he really makes an effort to mix the journalistic with the fine art.
He also shots stuff with a Holga and has won journalistic awards for this work.
Brian

Michel Hardy-Vallée · Aug 18, 2006

matt miller said:
I definitely believe that Sam's connection made his work come from the heart; and it is obvious in his photos. Burnett's photos have a more documentary feel because that is what he was doing there. Sam was living it.

I agree; what I like about Sam's photos is that he takes us where people live. It's what you could see if you knew your way around. They sit you in the chair of someone who lives there. Burnett gazes upon the people, which also gives potent images, but I find he is guilty of two gimmicks: toy camera and shallow-DOF-making-stuff-look-like-miniatures. Those can be OK techniques, but I couldn't see the reason why one would use them on post-Katrina New Orleans. Sam's straighter (but not innocent either) approach allows for a window to open and to connect the viewers with things.

Take for instance a motif that is common to both: the dried crackled mud. Burnett shows it once in a church, and the angle is so-so; Sam, on the other hand, shows you how it is everywhere, and how it permeates ordinary life items: books, churches, organs, and so on.

To me, Burnett is reportage, but Sam Portera is the thing itself.

david b · Aug 18, 2006

I agree...Sam's work by far is the best I have seen. I met Sam in New Orleans when I went down to photograph in February.

My work doesn't even come close to what Sam has produced.

Sportera · Aug 18, 2006

Thank you all for the encouraging words.

I met David Burnett last week at a show here in New Orleans, he was a genuinly nice guy. David invited me after I emailed him and told him how much I liked his work.

I walked up to him and introduced myself and he immediatly gave me his camera (digital!) and asked if I would take some publicity shots of him, I did. It was an interesting evening.

He spent a month or so here and along the gulf coast and I thanked him for help keeping the cause alive in the media.

I think for someone from the outside he did a good job. He probed deeper than most and tried to show a larger view than most Ive seen come and go here. The prints wre large, like 20x30 much bigger than mine. The colors were bright and much more saturated than the magazine print. Most people I see go a few streets into the Ninth ward and thats it.

There was show here called "Katrina Exposed" and is now a book, there is some great stuff in there too. Local photographers donated images for the project. Sadly I missed the dead line.

Davidb is great guy and I am glad to have met him and Jake Mendel who came down here to see the carnage first hand. This is what I tell most people to do. You have to see and smell this for yourself to truly understand the size of the disaster.

MurrayMinchin · Aug 18, 2006

mhv said:
...but Sam Portera is the thing itself.

So true!

Sportera said:
I walked up to him and introduced myself and he immediatly gave me his camera (digital!) and asked if I would take some publicity shots of him, I did. It was an interesting evening.

You're too diplomatic! !

Murray

P.S. Did he ever get a chance to see your images?

Sportera · Aug 18, 2006

Murray

He saw my website and the APUG interview, there were so many people there I didn't get a chance to really talk with him for long
.

Andy K · Aug 19, 2006

I wonder if he shot the area with his Speed Graphic before or after he saw your work Sam. I found it interesting that a point was made in NG of their photographer using an old camera, but I too found the work presented less personally emotive than yours. I also agree with the point made about his repeated use of a shallow DOF, it felt like he was thinking more about technique than about how to present the subject. Like he was showing off with the camera, rather than just using it as a tool.

Sam, have you or do you plan, to put your NO after Katrina work into a single volume? Say a book? I think quite a few would be interested in purchasing that.

Jim Chinn · Aug 19, 2006

Comparing Burnett to Sam's work is like comparing apples to oranges. Both offer a valid and compelling story of Katrina. Sam's is a more intimate view, Burnett's more of an overivew as one would suppose with an article in a major national magazine.

Motivations are very different. Sam experienced the storm and its aftermath. Burnett approaches the work as an outsider. Walker Evans was also an outsider when he worked for the FSA in the south during the depression. It did not seem to make his work any less moving or valid.

Sam's is first a personal accounting of the aftermath with plublicity secondary. Burnett's is more a professional, business approach. I would be surprised if the idea of publication and a possible book were not a major motivation and influence in how he approached the story.

Personally, I think Burnett's images would be much stronger without the (currently in vogue, it's all the rage) selective focus. They try to be documentary and intimate at the same time and I think fail at doing either.

I like what I have seen of Sams' work because it gives me a feel of place, loss and what was.

With the one year anniversay only days away, I am sure we will become aware of many more photographers with articles, web sites and books dedicated to the subject of Katrina.

Sportera · Aug 19, 2006

Thank you Jim and Andy.

I am in the progress of a book pitch, 12 photographers, all local. All different styles and techniques. I hope it goes through.

Ive also put together a self published book on LULU.com. It will be available soon. I made it for my family and freinds, but next week it will be available to everyone from lulu. The printing isn't that great but I didn't make it as a fine art book.

Digidurst · Aug 21, 2006

I liked the spread in NG but one thing that didn't feel right to me was the perspective that Mr. Burnett chose in some of his shots. It made the subject look miniature, i.e. insignificant.

Dorothy Blum Cooper · Aug 26, 2006

It's been interesting to see others perspective of the Gulf South since Katrina's landfall. At the same time it's somewhat disheartening to see so much of the focus on New Orleans when the devastation was (and is) so much more widespread. Regardless...I have to say as a native to Louisiana (recently transplanted to North Carolina, thanks to Katrina) and someone who saw it (not as up close and personal as others) that the majority of the images that are coming out of this catastrophe have been missing something...soul...heart.

There is a multitude of talent in the South with a great number of great photographers documenting all that is around them (pre and post Katrina). I've seen more work from outside people coming in to 'capture' the devastation while the local photographers stand on the wayside with the heart of the work in their hands. The public's loss.

There was show here called "Katrina Exposed" and is now a book, there is some great stuff in there too. Local photographers donated images for the project. Sadly I missed the dead line.

I opted out of that one for a number of reasons, the biggest one being our out-of-state move at the time of the show. Sorry to hear that you missed it, Sam. Your work would have definitely been something that stood out from the rest.

Anecdotal story to this...I had an email from Henry Rasmussen, editor of Black and White Magazine (US) just after the storm last year. They'd asked for select images from my 'Calm Before the Storm' montage to feature on New Orleans post-Hurricane Katrina. They ultimately passed on my work stating that they were going to use work from a photographer (local to them in California) who came in to our area, shot and left. In my opinion, the end result was a spread that was too wordy and images that had no heart...and more obviously staged. My opinion anyway.

Just wanted to add my thoughts about the 'outside' photography of my home.

removed account4 · Aug 26, 2006

i dunno, the burnett photographs are nice and all that, but they do not give me a sense of place like sam's photos do. same lived it, he has it in his bones.

mr. burnett's photographs are beautiful but he was sent there on assignment, not the same thing.

sam i look forward to your book!

john

Jersey Vic · Sep 7, 2006

mhv said:
As much as I like Dave Burnett, I think Sam Portera has much more powerful pictures.

Amen to that. Sam's is the best work I've seen by a long mile

Stew Squires · Sep 7, 2006

Thanks for sharing the link.

We were preparing to drill gas wells in St Bernard Parish east of New Orleans when Katrina hit. Storm surge there was 45-50'. Most of the buildings in the vicinity are simply gone. Most of what we brought in to rebuild the little infrastructure we had in place was confiscated by FEMA. Picures of New Orleans by oil field service companies were only a small part of things circulating in emails over the course of the weeks following. The devastation in so many other areas; no, the destruction of property in so many other areas is entirely different from the flooding that was rampant in New Orleans. Anyway these pictures certainly were a different take than those I saw on the net and evolked memories of that time.

I am only getting started in LF and have to say that although I have a Toyo 45AX, I really like my Speed Graphic with its assortment of Wollensak barrel lenses. Nice to see one in use professionally.

Stew

National Geographic: New Orleans shot with Speed Graphic

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