Where am I?

In the spring of 2009 I traveled to New Orleans to document the natural disaster of Hurricane Katrina and its outcome four and a half years later. The context of the investigation was about the idea of a "natural disaster" and what it can actually mean to a city. Other than the brute force of the storm and the physical destruction that happened in the moments of its impact, the long term ramifications are as much a disaster and have been charged in the realms of social, political and cultural disrepair. Is nature then more than the earth, wind and sea? Human nature can then trace back to natural disasters of cultural and social unease just as much as the way hurricanes, tornadoes, avalanches, and earthquakes can disrupt our world.

This then led to the question of the aesthetics and outcomes of a disaster and the city. The freeways that split the black bottom neighborhood as well as the riots began to tear Detroit apart with just as much force as a category 5 hurricane. The outcome looks much the same. Of these four photographs, two are from New Orleans while the others from Detroit. The worn outcome of both cities with two very different starting trajectories leads me to wonder what are the tipping points of other sites that too end up with the same characteristics? When do the stories divert and when do they converge? So when both places end up looking so much the same, sometimes I wonder... where am I?