One Block: A New Orleans Neighborhood Rebuilds (Aperture, August 2010), photographs by Dave Anderson, essay by Chris Rose, is a powerful portrait of post-Katrina New Orleans as seen through the prism of a single city block whose residents are attempting to rebuild their homes. Using portraiture and still lifes, Anderson explores the very nature of community while testing its resilience.
Anderson’s compassionate treatment of the neighborhood’s difficult circumstances has drawn comparisons to the work of Dorothea Lange and other Farm Security Administration-funded photographers. Seventy years later, between the devastation left by Hurricane Katrina and the current housing crisis, the stability and permanence of the American home is once again in jeopardy. One Block reflects Anderson’s affection for New Orleans and his fascination with the power of human resilience -both individually and collectively.
August 29, 2010 marks the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Artist talks, book signings, and exhibitions will take place in New York, New Orleans, San Francisco and Little Rock starting in July and continuing through the fall to commemorate the anniversary. The centerpiece event is a block party co-hosted by Aperture, The Oxford American and Preservation Resource Center of New Orleans on the block where Anderson made the photographs. The event will feature local cuisine and artist performances and celebrate the resiliency of this block and community. The following is a listing of this and other “One Block” events:
Thursday, August 26, 6-8 p.m.
One Block Exhibition Opening Reception & talk with the Artist
(Music by Lower Ninth Ward Revue featuring Al “Carnival Time” Johnson and the Guitar Lightnin’ Lee Band)
Ogden Museum of Southern Art
Exhibition on view:
Thursday, August 26, 2010 –Sunday, January 2, 2011
Saturday, August 28, 4 – 8 p.m.
Block Party at One Block location
Co-hosted by Aperture, The Oxford American and Preservation Resource Center of New Orleans
(500 block of Caffin Street, New Orleans, LA)
Open to the Public (First come, first serve)
About the Photographer
Dave Anderson has been recognized as “one of the shooting stars of the American photo scene” by Germany’s fotoMAGAZIN and named a “Rising Star” by Photo District News. A multi-talented image-maker, Dave worked in the Clinton White House and at MTV before discovering photography. His acclaimed first project, “Rough Beauty” was the winner of the 2005 National Project Competition awarded by Center, Santa Fe and was published with an essay by Anne Wilkes Tucker. Vince Aletti of the New Yorker has called his work “as clear-eyed and unsentimental as it is soulful and sympathetic.” Anderson’s work has been featured in magazines from Esquire to Stern and can be found in the collections of prominent museums, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans; the Musée de la Photographie, Charleroi; and the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. As a filmmaker, Dave’s original video series, “SoLost,” shot for The Oxford American, was recently named a finalist at the 2010 National Magazine Awards.
