HOME | DD
Yamenja β After Katrina
Published: 2006-05-23 18:50:49 +0000 UTC; Views: 945; Favourites: 17; Downloads: 10
Redirect to original
Description
Acrylic and oil on board.This looked much better until I tried a glaze before it was dry enough. That made it really muddy. I am trying a brighter, more impressionist version which isnt finished, but is in my scraps.
Taken from a photograph in a colour supplement, the original is beautiful, with a light I have got nowhere near capturing.
Related content
Comments: 42
This is a brilliant image.
For some reason it makes me think of how the American media under-ports, misreports or trivializes any injustices that involves African-Americans as the victims. It took a Katrina to bring notice to a people who had already suffered a mental, physical and emotional "Katrina" in terms of neglect by America. The same can be said of many places in the U.S...Baltimore, Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago's west side - all are road markers to the institutionalization of racism.
You celebrate and chronicle Blackness in your paintings with a genuine love, concern and dignity reminiscent of the great writers of the Harlem Rennaisance as well as those creative people in the late 60s and early 70s who said that "Black is Beautiful" in defiance of a nation that for centuries had told them it was ugly.
You are quite a remarkable woman.
π: 0 β©: 1
That is one of the most beautiful and meaningful comments I have ever been fortunate enough to receive, thank you Andrew.
If ever I get serious about self-promotion (which I hope to) I would very much like to quote you on that, with your permission.
You're pretty remarkable yourself, you know.
π: 0 β©: 0
reminds of the tsunami tragedy that occured in india a few years ago. India never knew Tsunami, before that. Chennai and many other towns looked like this, and Sri Lanka had a lot of similar pictures. Besides this, cyclones that hit the subcontinent leave behind many homeless like the above. And the corruption in the aid, medical help, worsens the situation.
π: 0 β©: 1
Yes, I can understand how it would reverberate with the Tsunami, although tsunami will always happen from natural causes without warning, but what happened to New Orleans was predicted and avoidable, and as it happened in such a wealthy, well equipped nation, the thing that stands out about it was not the 'natural disaster' of the hurricane, but the callous disregard of the government to the people affected by it. Both in the refusal to invest in adequate defences before the event and afterwards by not responding for so long.....
I think it is important to ackowledge that what happened in New Orleans was avoidable.
The international response to the tsuanmi appeared to be faster, but that said, so many millions suffer in Asia and Africa every day because the wealthiest nations wish to maintain ecologically and humanely unrealistic lifestyles
π: 0 β©: 1
Ah! My god! That disregard even when the governments know about the impemding disaster leads to lot more victims and sufferers than otherwise.
Yes! Millions suffer in Asia and Africa because the counterparts wish to maintain ecologically, humanely unrealistic lifestyles and also the ground reality in the Asian countries, atleast in my country, is also the failure of proper infrastructure in disaster management in all the three phases of a disaster(pre, during the disaster and post disaster).
I wonder at the heights of corruption as always.
Truly worrying. Sometimes, it feels humans help eachother as civilians, than the so called authorities appointed for the same. This applies from micro level to the macro level.
You are right.
π: 0 β©: 1
Yes you hit the nail on the head there Rama. I believe power does corrupt, although of course a few great people stand out as having not been corrupted by it, they seem to be the exceptions.
π: 0 β©: 1
Imagine the hardships that those few great people go through to go against the wind. At times they risk their lives. And for the rest, yes! they are the inspiration, hope and expectation as always. May be, I feel, it takes a little introspection to be humane which is so hard for the larger part(corrupted) of the system(s), shamefully. And I forgot to mention about the kid's expression in this painting. It is so good which speaks for your concern about the suffering part of the world. Genuine, you see, from this painting it is evident. I am proud of your aspirations and actions. 
π: 0 β©: 1
Yes, it is hard to imagine what those uncorrupted few in positions of power go though.
And thank you for your very kind comment!
π: 0 β©: 1
You are welcome and when you are free, go through this man's gallery, who is being banned from DA in a few days, may be, [link] ... ...
π: 0 β©: 1
why might he be banned?
one of my favourite artists here was banned some time ago, i never found out why
π: 0 β©: 1
Oh! Yeah! Exactly, why should one be banned? Naturally, we tend to speak/express.
Banning cant stop them., eh? 
Was your friend writing or drawing any controversial stuff or any provocative stuff like this guy, I showed you?
π: 0 β©: 1
No, thats the funny thing, his paintings were slightly humourous at times but not at all contentious. I imagine he may have been quite direct if confronted though, maybe an admin moved his work and he argues to vociferously, or something!
π: 0 β©: 1
Yeah! It is funny. Why dont the DA guys understand 
Yeah he must have done that(he should be polite with the DA admins)
π: 0 β©: 0
i think this one is beautiful as is. overall with the concept and everything. even though i feel for the people who had to go through all of that i never thought about doing something like this. alot of people lost everything they own to katrina and many lost there lives. i hated to see people jokin' about the folks from Lusiana. but some af the kids from new orleans that came to my school i guess were mad at the world. they walked around school in big groups like they were runnin' stuff so you know there was gonna be tention between some of the other houston kids. that year there were big fights like war or somethin'. i felt sorry for them but other people no so much. our school was all over the news. lol crazy....anyways i love this....
π: 0 β©: 1
Thanks.
I cant imagine what it was like for the kids who lost so much and ended up somewhere quite alien to them, I can understand their covering their insecurities by coming across a bit aggressive. I think the worst thing was (obviously) not the broken levees but the complete lack of support from the government....but yeah, an adult can understand that these kids were really traumatised and acting out, but you cant expect other kids to understand that. And you can bet the amount of counselling they would have needed wouldnt be available.....
People here didnt get to hear about that side of things, so thanks for letting me know. And well done for keeping a level head when things got so crazy around you.
π: 0 β©: 1
Your Welcome.
level headed? i guess so. you know they showed all that stuff on t.v. with the people supposatly "looting" but they never show you stuff like people in big camps with no basic needs of survival. one night i saw this dude on t.v. holding up this baby up to the camera sayin' he has no milk to feed the baby. and the baby looked skinny and small. it was so sad. it hurt me in some way or another. i don't know what could have been done exactly but i felt like something could have been done. and the "looting" thing is b.s.!! those people could have been just tryin' to survive! gettin' food and all of that kinda of stuff. but even the people who was gettin' stuff like t.v.'s and all that could have been tryin to survive as well. u think people are gonna be like: HEY WITH ALL THIS CHAOS AROUND ME THIS IS THE PERFECT OPPERTUNITY TO GOT STEALING A WHOLE CRAP THAT I DON'T NEED AT THIS MOMENT. those people could have been planin' on selling that stuff to provide for their families when ever they made it to their disenation. every little thing could help in their situation. that's i got to say for now....
π: 0 β©: 1
Yep. I've watched all the coverage I could and frankly couldnt believe my ears, when people who have had no food, shelter or water for days are referred to as looting when they find a source of drinkable water. If people took stuff other than food and water (which I dont think many would have) then as you say, they were still acting in the most extreme conditions where anything that might make the difference between surviving or not surviving has to be made use of. I couldnt agree with you more.
What I didnt see was coverage of the evacuees in Texas (or anywhere else) and how hard it was to settle into communities, and for those communities to deal with traumatised newcomers. I dont suppose that was considered 'news' by the networks who fed so avidly off the original disaster. That disaster not being the hurricane but the callous disregard of the government initially in not maintaining the levees and then not acting to save lives immediately when they broke.
π: 0 β©: 1
(aight i'm bacc from spring break now) aight now i have heard that people knew about the levees not being stable. They have been that way for a while but noone did anything about it. I have also heard that they knew about Katrina coming and warned the people of New Orleans at the last minute. Now i don't know if this is fact i just heard it from someone else but it don't realy sound right to me. i don't realy beleive it till' i have proof or something.
The whole evacuees thing was crazy. we use to have a whole lot of them at my school but not so much anymore. i think they went bacc home or else where of somethin'. i don't realy know. but i know that there was a big trust issue though. them coming from the "muder capital" and all. it was crazy cuz they are so different from the people in Houston. they way they talk, the way they dress, they way how most of then wear their hair in dreds. you'd have to have been here to completly undestand i think. but if you have any questions about all of that u can just ask me or :dvquebishop . ok?
π: 0 β©: 1
Thanks very much for sharing some of this experience, it's very interesting to hear about how the original trauma had knock-on effects and what happened afterwards.
I think that it was known that the levees needed improvement but it was dismissed - I guess, giving them the benefit of the doubt, that they hoped something like that just wouldnt happen, kind of ostrich mentality at best, and not appropriate when lives are at stake.
As for predicting well in advance, I dont think they can, they can see theres a big hurricane on its way in the general direction but they are so prone to changing direction that I dont believe you can predict exactly where it will hit much in advance.
There is no question in mind though that they could and should have mobilised aid much, much faster than they did.
It must have been strange to have all these new, and traumatised, people just arrive out of the blue.
π: 0 β©: 0
I love this. I think the fact that the picture got a bit muddy, as you put it, helps to convey the desolate mood of the image. I have family down in New Orleans. We think my Uncle Junior died from complications after breathing the bacteria infested air down there.
My Uncle Robert was in Spike Lee's documentary "When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts". I have a picture of him in one of my journals. [link]
π: 0 β©: 1
It's strange the ways in which that tragedy of human negligence has touched my life.
The picture was the first thing I chose to paint, when I took a course, coming up for a year ago. I had been to a wedding the summer before of a friend and a man from New Orleans. They moved there after getting married and Katrina hit less than 2 weeks later. They were not physically harmed but lost their home and of course it wasnt the start to married life anyone would imagine.
Then when I signed up here, the first comment it got was from John, who had lived there all his life, until the hurricane and is now in Texas. That was the start of a dialogue and a friendship that is still ongoing.
I am honoured that people such as you and John find my painting an acceptable reflection of the unimaginable circumstances there.
I saw When the Levees Broke on tv here. I am a big Spike Lee fan. It was an incredibly powerful and moving documentary.
I am really sorry to hear about your Uncle Junior, and very impressed by your Uncle Robert. What a man!
I think those silver linings - like having your family honoured by a film that is seen across the world, take on extra significance when there is so little still to celebrate in the awful aftermath.
I watched another documentary about the jazz photographer Herman Leonard. It showed him returning to his beautiful deco house there (now quite uninhabitable) and sorting through his damaged photographs - strangely many of the faces in his portraits had survived the damage, while the edges of the prints were very corroded, it was as if there was an element of grace and somehow the corrision occured in a way that told the story of what had happened, without utterly destroying his work. Another silver lining.
π: 0 β©: 0
This is wonderful.It captures the desolation and the pain of it. The overwhelming sadness. And now that lovely city is being reconstructed to be the Republican model for privatization....with no room for the working poor .
π: 0 β©: 1
Thanks.
I am sorry I never got to visit the city before it was so needlessly destroyed. I have a friend who had just got married and gone to live there, with her husband who is from there, when it hit. They are young college lecturers and have been able to come back to the UK. But I also chat to someone here, who I've been getting to know a little since he commented on the pic. I cant get my head round it at all (like so much that goes on in the world) but getting to hear of someone's day to day struggle, who lived there all their life, and has been forced to relocate to somewhere he would never have chosen to go, really brings it home.
With all the goodwill and benefit gigs in the world - nothing could replace all that has been lost., the lives in terms or mortality, and the livlihoods.
The thing that angers me most is knowing that if it had been a whie community the defences would have been protected and maintained. That's the story throughtout the world though eh.
π: 0 β©: 1
Yes it is. And the fact is they dont WANT the blacks and the poor to come back. They are reconstructing the city to exclude the low income people[as in replacing low income housing with middle and upper income housing] They fired THE ENTIRE CITY SCHOOL STAFF and are replacing them with a privatized school system[again, something the poor wont be able to afford. George W Bush and Company believe that ALL of what they call"entitlement " programs[federally funded healthcare, housing and school systems etc] should be replaced by systems run by private corporations. That will be fine for the well to do, they just want the poor and the blacks to just go away. It is sickening, it is shameful, and it is infuriating!!! It makes me furious that my government is treating our OWN people in such a shabby and shameless way. If you are poor, elderly or black, you just need to dissolve into the woodwork or something, because the country doesnt have the resources for you. It is totally against what America is supposed to be, and what it is supposed to stand for. Those are OUR people, OUR citizens...they should not be just cast off like trash. Im sorry, Im raving, but it just makes me so angry I want to scream!!!
π: 0 β©: 1
That sounds horrendous - and disgusting - but not in the least bit surprising.
It would be a tragedy anywhere, but it seems especially so, to have destroyed such a successful and unique and culturally diverse community. And to have done it twice - once by negligence hen a 2nd time by design.
But again, it is the story of the world today in microcosm.
Thank you for taking the time to share the information though.
π: 0 β©: 1
It is horrendous. The republicans have no time for the poor, the underprivileged or the elderly . They are "too expensive to be bothered with" they would rather spend our tax dollars on wars.
π: 0 β©: 1
Absolutely.
And to make matters worse, the tradiontal left moves further and further to the right, to try and claim back the polical ground - ignoring the fact that most people don't vote - because the policies are anti-people!
Our political leader - Blair - first dropped the word 'socialist' from his reformed Labour party, and since then has just got crazier - joining the US in a war that the body they were supposedly allied to opposed it. Now advocating increased nuclear 'power' facilites - and this is supposedly the voice of the Left. Ha!
π: 0 β©: 2
By the way, have you read the PNAC Proposal[Project for a New American Century] if not, you should check it out on the net.
π: 0 β©: 1
No I haven't.
Thanks for the tip.
π: 0 β©: 1
Its a plan for maintaining US dominance in the world through continual war, and a constant buildup of military strength. [it benefits the corporation and the defense contractors, and disposes of some of those poor people who can only get college money by joining the military.
π: 0 β©: 1
Yep I did a lil browse on it - kind of like the KKK but on a global scale eh, and dropping the pretense of a spiritual cause and just coming right out with the zenophobic imperialist punches. - missiles - whatever.
I've only been to the US once - to LA (because I was invited there). I found people pleasant and friendly, but all the gun-toting patriotism was hard to swallow. It all produces some great dissidents though!
As a rule we are just a decade behind you, whatever you do over there, but with less guns, except in the inner cities where we seem to be catching up extra fast.
π: 0 β©: 1
Im not a gun toter...never have been[although I grew up with them,] but I do believe in standing up for your beliefs, and these fools in govt now are stepping all over our civil rights
π: 0 β©: 1
Ooh it didn't occur to me that you might be!
π: 0 β©: 0
Its crazy. I cant believe anyone in the world can believe this war is for anything but profit. They dressed it up in pretty patriotic lies to get people to send their children to die there, yeah. They knew if they said, EXXON is just not happy with the price they are getting for a barrel of oil, so we are going to start a war and destabilize the region, oh, and enrich the defense contractors too" people wouldnt be so willing to send their kids off to die for corporate profits, so they had to make it sound good. And people swallowed it like it was candy.[and unfortunately, many many people over here still no, hard as it is to believe]And in the duration, Bush is using his "endless war on terroe" as justification to strip people of their civil rights, and dismantle the Constitution. And so many still trust the maniac, and many many more just dont care, as long as their little materialistic lives aren't interrupted. They keep the really gruesome stuff off the news, and sanitize the video clips so as not to upset anyone[Barbara Bush said she just couldnt waste her beautiful mind thinking about war"] Actually, they know if people saw the reality of it day after day, they would rise up and do something about it. So they keep the blown up babies and the gut shot pregnant women off the screen, so as not to force people to care about what is being done with their tax dollars.So they sleep well at night, ignoring the fact that their hard earned money is being used to blow up school children, and they can go on not caring.
π: 0 β©: 1
wow this is a great piece. that kid looks wise beyond his years... and mine.
π: 0 β©: 1
Thanks, lol,
The orginal photograph was so beautiful and touching.
I did start another version of this, but it's another thing I never finished....I have it in scraps I think but havent resubmitted that....I will do it now.
π: 0 β©: 0
Wow! I miss my town. Looks like I will never be able to go back again, but many of us won't. Maybe I'll post something on my gallery about home. Then again, maybe I should move on. Ha-ha! Been gone for nine months today and I still cannot adjust to the new thing, the new town in another state.
...another state of mind.
On another note, the muted hues seem to capture the mood aptly, and the lighting you have captured, while it is not photo real (and it doesnβt need to be/ you're an artist -not a Xerox), it sets the mood. The sky always seems muted in N'Orleans. It rains there like, 100 days a year. And being built in a huge drainage ditch gives you a funny way of viewing the sky. Like a gigantic ceiling, painted slightly off white. Like a huge fluorescent fixture that blinks in and out all the time. LOL, guess the bulb needed to be replaced.
...and that kid in the painting, he looks just like my nephew James. Incredible.
π: 0 β©: 1
Hello
Thanks very much for your comments, I am - what - touched? gratified? - maybe a little bit honoured that you found my portrayal of what's left of your home town acceptable.
It sounds like it was a wonderful place. A friend of mine married a man from there, and they went to live there after their honeymoon, but were only able to stay for a couple of weeks before the hurricane hit. I am really sorry that you dont think you will be able to return there. My friend and her husband came back here a few weeks ago.
I am not sure I can even imagine what it's like to lose your home that way - not from nature, but from government negligence. I've suffered from that in a significant way, but what I can't get my head round is the scale of what happened to you - so many people, homes, lives.....
I hope things are okay for you where you are now, and that you will find yourself in a place that feels right to you before too long.
I had a look at you gallery - it's beautiful. I hope you don't mind if I watch you.
(You write beautifully too, btw).
π: 0 β©: 1
Lost friends, lost things and lost my way.
Yet...
Everyday you wake up your life starts over again, doesn't it? Every day you get a chance to erase the day before; to place it out of your memory.
To forget about it.
If I can manage to stop living in the "glorious past" where I had the same challenges and pittfalls as I have now -maybe a few less, but odddly I really can't tell. They talk about post traumatic stress, I say rubbish! And FEMA; feh! I hate the lot.
...But today is another day. Today, everything could change for the better. Today may be a good day. That was my hope before Katrina, and it is my hope after.
Only thing I care about now is, will I get to draw today?
Anyway, thanks for the watch. I'll be watching you too.
π: 0 β©: 0