Aftermath is a 15 minute documentary I shot in New York City immediately after 9/11 that captures the feel of New York City in the weeks and months after the attacks. I had never shot or edited video before, and I haven’t after, and much of what I believed when I made the film has changed after observing America’s response to the attack, but I still believe in the importance of the lessons that I took from 9.11 and the words of the people of New York.

Andy

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A scene From the “Real Life Struggles of a Professional Photographer”……the details have been changed to protect the not so innocent.

Phone rings……ring, ring, ring, ring.
A concerned journalist reaches for his iphone. Its a hidden number “1111111……
He thinks, “Assignment from Time Magazine.”
Answers the call quickly, with hope.
Photographer: Helllooo.
PE: Hey, BiIl, its —— from ——–, in — ——. I have a really interesting assignment you might be interested in.

Photograoher: Great

PE: Its for Friday, are you busy? Its a terrific opportunity

Photographer: Let me think a moment. I am not booked. What have you got?

PE: Its for the business section. A woman is selling tar balls from the oil spill from her home– its the only business of its kind. She is going to show you around her house, you will have all access. We want a profile on her.

Photographer: Great, sounds amazing. I can do it.

PE: Super. By the way, how far is Lafayette from you? It looks midway between New Orleans and Memphis.

Photographer: Fantastic. Let me Google that. Hold on.

(Photographer Googles the address quickly)

Photographer: Looks like 4 hours.

PE: Fantastic, glad you can do this– you are the perfect person. OK, you have to be there at 8:00am to meet the writer. We want a general sense of the place, what the woman’s house is like, where she works, and after her kids come home maybe some shots around the neighborhood. Its a quick turnaround so we need high rez files Friday night.

Photographer: Great, no problem.

PE: Super.

Photographer: But to be there are 8:00am I would have to leave my house at 3:30am–I think I need to leave the night before. Its 8 hours of driving anyway, without the shooting.

PE: Well, I really wanted to try to keep this to one day for the usual $300. fee if possible, along with our co-ownership of the copyright of anything you take.

Photographer: I TOTALLY understand. Not sure I can do that. Maybe you should maybe try someone from ——– its a bit closer.

PE: OK, thanks, let me see if I can find another photographer. But I will definitely get back to you one way or the other. Keep Monday open for me!

Photographer: No problem. will do. Thanks for the thinking of me.

(Hangs up. Photographer falls back into his chair. Puts his hands to his head. Rent is due in two weeks. He still hasn’t paid for the two Canon 5D Mark II and the L lens. or his yearly Photoshelter bill.)

Of course, the PE never calls back.

Its April, traditionally the start of the rainy season in Port au Prince, and eleven weeks after the earthquake many of an estimated 600,000 Haitians living in makeshift camps remain in “bedsheet” dwellings, so-named from their construction of bedsheets stretched between large sticks hammered into the ground.

Some twenty of the estimated three hundred camps are in grave danger from flood waters as they are located on or at the bottom of steep hills. The danger is greatest is said to be “red” camps, a UN designation for those camps most at risk for flooding. The largest of the “red” camps is the so-called “golf course” camp, formerly secured by the American 86th Airbone, on the grounds of the Petionville Club, a private golf course that is now home to an estimated 60,000 Haitians. The essential services at the camp are housed in the ravine at the bottom of the hill, the area most likely to be over-run by water streaming down the slope of the golf course, which, like much of Haiti, has been largely stripped of its trees, this time by the refugees themselves. It is thought that here heavy rains could kill 5,000 people.

Although UN officials have publicly spoken to the dangers of the camps, to this point nothing has been done to move the resident’s of the “golf course.” Lacking adequate sanitary facilities, garbage is piled up in mounds and burned, and human waste is collected in pans and thrown out in the mornings, often all too near the tents themselves. The stench from the camp farther up in Petionville’s central square, formerly the site of outdoor movie projections, but now completely covered with makeshift shelters makes walking down the streets almost unbearable. Indeed, much of Port au Prince’s once public space in now completely covered in shelters, from the sprawling Camp Piste at the foot of Delmas, to the Champ de Mars across from the wounded Presidential Palace. Most soccer fields are occupied as well. And the fear is that the longer the situation remains, the greater possibility that the camps will become permanent, making the 40,000 strong Camp Piste, which like the rest of Port au Prince has no sewer system and little infrastructure, another Cite Soleil, requiring long-term assistance from the UN and international NGOs. As Richard Morse points out in his blog in the
Huffington Post the living conditions are far from new in Haiti. There are no sewer systems in Port au Prince, and many of the residents of the camps were living in structures of tin or concrete before the earthquake. He argues that it was relatively easy for them to adapt to living in the camps. And with a somewhat sure supply of water, and food, for the moment, to be had, what incentive to leave?

Part of the issue is ownership of the land, as many of the “slum” dwellings that collapsed in the hills of Port au Prince were built illegally, on private property. Even if housing were to be created in Port au Prince, the question of where to put the housing is moot. An architect with offices in Port au Prince suggested that the Venezuelan model, in which the country gave peasants deeds to land, might in fact be the best model for Haiti. By allowing Haitians to have land, and to perhaps give them low-interest loans and assistance in building simple homes, it might be possible to reconstruct Port au Prince, while hopefully encouraging others to leave to city and take residence in the countryside. Although environmentally challenged, Haiti still manages to produce a prodigious amount of food, as evidenced by the “te marchen,” or small merchants, who were quick to return to the streets of the capitol after the earthquake.

Where the land for the poor might come from is a question as elusive as the question of an election scheduled to take place later this year. Preval has said that he wants to remain in office into the resources are allocated. Critics have said that he represents the culture of patronage and corruption that led to the current crisis in Haiti.

Its hopeful that the groundwork will be laid for making the important decisions in a meeting Wednesday of the donor nations, who must decide how to spend an estimated 3.1 billion US dollars that have already been pledged for the next 18 months. But Morse, among others,
himself questions whether those who have already failed Haiti can be expected to carry the lead in rebuilding the country. And for many in the refugee camps, change needs to be made sooner rather than later. As one resident of the Petionville “golf course” camp, Jacques Joseph, 31, told me last month while gesturing at the steep hills of the golf course, “the rain won’t wait, and when it comes much of this may be gone.”

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This work was produced during my workshop in Coney Island in June. I woud like to thank my students for supporting the program, and making it possible for me to add to my body of work in Coney Island, which started in the mid-eighties.

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Images of a second lined procession honoring the late Albert Morris Jr., chief of the North Side Skull and Bone Gang in Treme section of New Orleans on Tuesday. Morris died Monday. Morris is credited with keeping the “bones gang,” a group of largely African-American Mardi Gras revelers who wear skeleton costumes on Mardi Gras Day, alive when the tradition waned in the 80′s and 90′s. On Mardi Gras morning the bones gangs move through the neighborhoods telling people to “wake up.”