Katrina photo book sends message

• By GREG LANGLEY
• Books editor
• Published: Aug 24, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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Jarret Schecter is a New York City photographer who “strives to bring visual awareness to adverse and largely poverty-induced, sociopolitical issues. He was drawn to the post-Katrina devastation in New Orleans about a year ago for presumably those reasons. What he found when he pointed his camera here and there in the Lower Ninth Ward is represented in a new art book, Katrina Personal Objects (Trolley Books, $19.99), edited by Francesca Sorrenti.

This is not a big coffee table book, but is in fact a bit smallish at 8-1/2 by 7 inches. It’s printed on very heavy weight, high quality creamy paper and the images are crystal clear. What are those images? Mostly storm detritus — religious icons, dolls, papers, mud-encrusted and shattered crockery, an antique mirror engulfed in brown autumn weeds in the backyard or a once-was home. There are stovetops with pots still containing the desiccated remains of a pre-storm meal, an echo of a more convivial day.

All this is meant to convey the loss of meaning that occurred when these objects were ripped from the lives of their owners, and vice versa. A doll without a name is just another mud-crusted relic of a tragedy, but Schecter implies that it was once a comma in a sentence describing a child’s life, a comma called Dolly or Betty or something sweet. That child, he suggests, may be among the more than 1,000 people who died in the immediate aftermath of the storm.

It’s a subtle message, and Louisianans used to seeing a stream of such sad images on a daily basis will not see these photos as unique. Artistically, their merit is entirely subjective. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Schecter has a serious message, one that people around the rest of the country shouldn’t forget: New Orleans hasn’t even come close to recovering completely. Promises were made by politicians, by aid agencies, by the rest of the country. Those promises haven’t been kept. Yet. As recently as June the Washington Post reported on a debate that has arisen over whether Katrina is still killing people in New Orleans — the latent effects of exposure to mold, dust and toxic chemicals.

Maybe someday people will look at images like Schecter’s and not automatically say, “that’s New Orleans.” As for now, they are a reminder of what remains to be done.

World War II program
The Readings in Literature and Culture program returns to the East Baton Rouge Parish Library this fall. The Bluebonnet Regional Branch, 9200 Bluebonnet Blvd., will host a six-week series of readings and discussions about World War II as a national and personal experience for Americans and their adversaries. “I’ll Be Seeing You … America and World War II” is free and open to the public. It will be held on 1-3 p.m. Wednesdays, beginning Aug. 27, and concluding on Oct. 1.

Stanley E. Hilton, Jane Lucas DeGrummund professor of history at LSU in Baton Rouge, will introduce and lead discussions on America’s role in World War II. This program will examine how Americans waged war for human rights using an arsenal of new weapons and combat tactics that still shape the world today. Participants will read and discuss the nature of war as fought on the high seas of the Pacific and the plains of Europe with the perspective of America’s principle opponents included. Readings include a few chapters each week from books especially chosen to represent many different views on this topic.

Dates, subjects and accompanying book titles are:

• Wednesday, Aug. 27 — “G.I.’s Against the Wehrmacht Counter-Attack & (1942-1945),” D-Day by Stephen Ambrose
• Wednesday, Sept. 3 —“Bombs Away! the Air Offensive Against Nazi-Held Europe,” The Mighty Eighth: The Air War in Europe as told by the Men Who Fought It by Gerald Astor
• Wednesday, Sept. 10, “Turning the Tide in the Pacific: Midway (1942),” Incredible Victory: The Battle of Midway by Walter Lord
• Wednesday, Sept. 17, “Counter-Attack & Victory in the Pacific,” Guadalcanal Diary by Richard Tregaskis.
• Wednesday, Sept. 24, “America’s Enemies,” Voices from the Third Reich by Johannes Steinhoff and Japan at War: An Oral History by Haruko and Theodore Cook.
• Wednesday, Oct. 1 — “Homefront USA,” Double Victory: A Multicultural History of America in World War II by Ronald Takaki.

RELIC is jointly sponsored by the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities and the Louisiana Library Association. Funding is provided by the State of Louisiana and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). For more information, call (225) 763-2283.

Civil War discussion series
The Galvez branch of the Ascension Parish Library, 40300 La. 42 in Prairieville, will host a six-week series of readings and discussions about the Civil War as it was experienced in Louisiana.

The program is titled “Battleground Louisiana: Civil War Events and Experiences.” The program is free and open to the public and will be held 6-8 p.m. Tuesdays beginning Sept. 9 and concluding on Oct. 14. Readers who would like to commit to the program must register in advance in person or by calling the library at (225) 622-3339. Due to limited space and the limited number of books, registration will close after 25 sets of books are distributed. Only one set of books will be checked out per household. Readers must have a current library card.

“Battleground Louisiana: Civil War Events and Experiences” is funded by the State of Louisiana and sponsored by the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities and the Louisiana Library Association. The program will be conducted by Charles Elliott of the Department of History and Political Science at Southeastern Louisiana University. The sessions will address various issues and campaigns of the war in Louisiana. Texts include The Louisiana Native Guards: The Black Military Experience During the Civil War, by John Hollandsworth; When the Devil Came down to Dixie: Ben Butler in New Orleans, by Chester Hearne; One Damn Blunder from Beginning to End: The Red River Campaign of 1864, by Gary Joiner; Brokenburn: The Journal of Kate Stone, 1861-1868, ed. by John Anderson; and The Civil War in Louisiana, by John Winters.

“While thousands of Louisianans died serving the Confederate cause in the campaigns in Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania, equally significant events occurred within Louisiana,” observed James Segreto, director of RELIC Library Programs for the LEH. He further added, “Its many rivers were settings of complex and costly campaigns with direct bearing on the duration and outcome of the war. A state with a mosaic of racial and economic interests became a battleground and a testing ground for racial solutions foreshadowing a postwar South and a modern America.”