Umbrage Editions is proud to announce our exhibition, Coming Back: New Orleans Resurgent, featuring the imagery captured by Getty Images photographer Mario Tama. As the eyes of the world are focused on the Gulf coast, as the BP oil spill advances across the waters, we are reminded of the fragilit... Read more
Umbrage Editions is proud to announce our exhibition, Coming Back: New Orleans Resurgent, featuring the imagery captured by Getty Images photographer Mario Tama. As the eyes of the world are focused on the Gulf coast, as the BP oil spill advances across the waters, we are reminded of the fragility of the environment and communities of that region. The exhibition contextualizes the fifth anniversary of Katrina with a primary focus on the ongoing need for rebuilding efforts in the Gulf coast, now more needed than ever.
Of the vast amount of media coverage that shocked the nation and caused a moral outcry of conscience at governmental mismanagement and near-criminal inaction, the images by photographer Mario Tama were simply among the best. But this project is also singular and memorable for the next chapter which Mario Tama has also covered so thoroughly and sensitively. Remarkably, when the catastrophe waned and other press went away, Tama stayed with the support and encouragement of his colleagues at Getty Images and continued to document the process of recovery (and some of its terrible failures). His constancy has resulted in a large and moving body of work that displays the resilience of the human spirit even amid such immense struggle, creating an optimistic portrait of New Orleans rather than one of only destruction. He is, in short, a man of great visual gifts, also gifted with a generous and open heart. With a journalist’s determination, an artist’s eye, and a humanitarian’s heart, he eloquently captures on film the essence of disaster alongside the desire for hope and change.
The exhibition contains imagery from the forthcoming book, coming Back: new Orleans Resurgent (September 2010), which contains a moving introduction by Anderson cooper. 100 percent of Getty Images royalties from the book will go to new Schools for new Orleans, a nonprofit organization at the heart of a remarkably successful effort to overhaul public education in a recovering city.
