According to Rob Nixon, slow violence refers to “violence that occurs gradually and out of sight; a delayed destruction often dispersed across time and space,” that exacerbates the vulnerability of ecosystems and of people who are often poor, dis-empowered, and often involuntarily displaced.
These are my ongoing notes on such instances.
Christ, the car salesman, as witnessed in New Orleans East, LA, 2020
The Bayou Bienvenue Wetland Triangle is a remnant of a once great Mississippi River Delta swamp. As recently as the 1960s, a freshwater cypress swamp extended from New Orleans eastward to Lake Borgne.
Due to man-made intervention, a once vital resource for the community, providing fish, game, wood, and recreation, was lost. Notably, the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MRGO), a nearby shipping channel completed in the 1960s, brought salt water into the freshwater wetlands, killing the trees, eroding the land, and destroying tens of thousands of acres of protective wetlands. Wetlands, especially cypress forests, can act as “horizontal levees” – reducing the height and speed of storm surges and sheltering man-made levees from waves. During Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the levees along the MRGO were decimated by storm surge causing catastrophic flooding of communities, most notably the Lower Ninth Ward.
In addition to the obstacle of securing the funding needed to restore this habitat, there are 496 lots owned by 178 different parties within Bayou Bienvenue, as a result of a speculative subdivision of the land in the 40s and 50s, that eyed this area as having a future as developable property.
The Bonnet Carré Spillway was completed in 1931, as a flood control system that when employed redirect Mississippi floodwaters to the Gulf of Mexico via Lake Pontchartrain, subsequently bypassing New Orleans. In addition to the problematic history of it's construction, which includes the desecration of enslaved African burial sites, environmentalists and local coastal fisheries have witnessed the devastating effects on the Gulf’s saltwater ecosystems and seafood industry as a result the sudden fresh water intrusion. Climate scientists insist that as a result of global warming, changes to weather patterns that include increases in the number of heavy rainfall events across the Mississippi's huge watershed, have caused an increase of spillway openings, far beyond that which was ever originally intended.
The effects of these disruptions to the saltwater marine life have far reaching effects for the nearby Gulf coastal communities. Oyster populations are among the most sensitive to these salinity changes, causing massive die offs. Between overharvesting, the BP oil spill, and freshwater intrusion, the oyster population are at risk for their survival.
In addition to being a local food staple, oysters reefs provide much needed protections against land loss due to waves, storms and rising seas as well as sustain habitats that include not just oysters, but crabs and redfish as well. Prior to the coronavirus pandemic, The Coalition to restore Coastal Louisiana was working on a long term effort to collect the shells from New Orleans seafood restaurants in order to recycle them for barrier creation. But due to the current circumstances, the project has been put on hold as the needed shells are no longer in abundance with the closing of restaurants, and the health risks associated with volunteers working closely to create the reefs, is too high.
According to a recent study published in December 2020, human made, or anthropogenic, mass crossed over to exceed all living biomass. The researchers also found that anthropogenic mass has doubled every 20 years since 1900 and the amount of new materials being produced every week is equivalent to the average body weight of all 7.7 billion people on Earth.
Abandoned tires in New Orleans East, LA, 2020
Americans represent 5% of the world’s population, but generate 30% of the world’s garbage. According to the Recycling Coalition of Utah, in a lifetime, the average American will personally throw away 600 times his or her body weight, which for an average adult would leave a legacy of 90,000 pounds of trash at the end of their lifetime. It also states that in the U.S., industry moves, mines, extracts, shovels, burns, wastes, pumps and disposes of 4 million pounds of material in order to provide one average middle-class American family’s needs for one year.
Found trash pile, New Orleans, 2020
Labor Day, Shell Bank Creek, Brooklyn, 2020
Disemboweled Wild Boar, Lower Ninth Ward, LA, 2020
Disemboweled Cushion, Lower Ninth Ward, LA, 2020
View from Pointe-au-Chien towards Isle de Jean Charles. Pointe-au-Chien is located 80 miles south of New Orleans and is home to the Pointe-au-Chien Tribe. Throughout the 20th century, Timber and Oil industries have cut at least 10,000 miles of canals across coastal Louisiana which caused saltwater to be introduced into once protective marshes, giving rise to their destruction. Couple that with the rising sea waters resulting from climate change and the almost futile effort of containing the MIssissippi River, this once self sustaining community has seen the devastating effects first hand. The Pointe-au-Chien territory once boasted land for hunting and cultivating crops for food and medicine, in addition to a thriving environment for residents to catch fish, crabs, and oysters. Now what once were fields and forests, have been turned to water within a half a century.
While some members have been forced to relocate to nearby areas, the Tribal members that still remain have had to constantly adapt their way of life, their livelihoods, and the height of their homes to account for the constant inundation of water, dwindling natural resources, and the preservation of their most significant and cherished cultural sites.
Geneva Lebeouf and Earl Billiot of the Pointe-au-Chien Tribe, in their Tribal community center. 2019
The road to Pointe-au-Chien, 2019
Nearby Isle de Jean Charles exists just outside the recently installed levee, lock, and floodgate system that aims to protect Terrebonne and Lafourche Parishes, as well as Pointe-au-Chien, from storms. The island, once home to the Isle de Jean Charles Band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Tribe, has lost more than 98% of its land mass and was the first community in the U.S. to receive federal funding to fully relocate its remaining residents. It is now contested though as to how the ambitious resettlement using federal money will affect the tribe’s sovereignty going forward.
While the Isle de Jean Charles Tribe has received federal and state recognition, the Pointe-au-Chien Tribe, despite it’s history, has only been able to acquire state recognition. According to U.S. dept of Interior, only federally recognized Tribes are eligible for funding and services from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, either directly or through contracts, grants, or compacts. Without federal recognition, the Pointe-au-Chien Tribe have very little control over the fate over their ancestral lands.
Located just south New Orleans along the Mississippi River, sits Chalmette Refining (owned by PFB Energy) in St. Bernard Parish. According to a 2020 study by Environmental Integrity Project, emission readings at the fascility had a benzene concentration of 12.3 micrograms per cubic meter. That number is higher than the 10 microgram threshold established by the EPA and is the eighth-highest of more than 100 refineries with benzene monitors in place around the country. Benzene is a carcinogen even in small amounts. Long-term exposure can cause leukemia and other blood-related illnesses.
According to the report, about 4,500 people live within a mile of the refining facility. About 30% of them are below the poverty line.
View from Bonnet Carré Spillway towards the Shell Petrochemical compound in Norco, Louisiana.
Over the last 100 years, Norco’s residents, as well as all those living and working throughout the “chemical corridor” or “cancer alley”, have endured pollution levels far exceeding recommendations from the EPA. From a corporate culture of denial and historical lack of oversight, to insignificant accountability measures and restitutions to the residents for the life threatening damages incurred, these companies continue to operate with impunity and empty promises of significant improvement.
Abandoned American Diner, Woodstock, VA
Advertisement in the 7th ward, New Orleans
Alpine, Texas
This photograph was made in a jail yard while I was employed as a stills photographer on a full length feature film.
One of the filming locations was an active correctional facility/jail in Southern Louisiana. While the location was being used as a movie set, real inmates were navigating their real lives confined inside this jail.
Jails hold inmates that are sentenced for misdemeanor crimes, inmates awaiting trial for misdemeanor and felony crimes, inmates/convicts that are serving sentences for probation or intense probation violations, and individuals that are delinquent in child support payments.
French Quarter, New Orleans