The Beautiful Spirit of New Orleans

As we approach the 10th Anniversary of Katrina, the nation is turning its gaze to the city of New Orleans. To remember, to pay respects to those who were lost, and to those who lost so much.

Like so many have done in the years following Hurricane Katrina, I recently moved to New Orleans — without a job offer or significant other — simply because I had fallen in love with the city.

Every day I move through this achingly gorgeous, vibrant, complex place with the growing understanding that I can never fully understand what its people went through ten years ago. A recognition that no amount of photographs, stories or personal encounters can make me an expert on someone else’s experience.

What I can do is open my eyes, ears, heart, and mind as fully as possible to those around me. I can keep remembering, supporting and honoring those lives that were deeply transformed in August of 2005.

For many, including transplants like myself who moved to here after Katrina and thousands of native New Orleanians still waiting to return to their hometown, the thing that draws us here, that we work to preserve and contribute to, is also what we hope will always remain: the disarmingly beautiful spirit of this city and the people who inhabit it.

All text and photos by Christiana Botic.