Katrina
Photo Exhibit Takes UK Award
A sample from Life in the Wake of Katrina. |
Piper Hanson ’08 recently won first place in an art
competition, “Social Worlds, Natural Worlds,” coordinated
by the British Sociological Association (BSA), for her photography
exhibition Life in the Wake of Katrina.
The exhibition is a collection
of photos taken during and just after Hurricane Katrina
by residents of St. Bernard Parish, one of the hardest-hit
communities in New Orleans. It was first displayed in the
Campus Center’s Nolan
Art Gallery in February 2007.
Hanson worked as an intern with the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, an environmental health organization, during the
summer following the hurricane. Her job was to sift through
a collection of hurricane eye-witness photos and talk with
the photographers. Life in the Wake of Katrina includes
300 pictures and has been shown in several galleries.
Life in the Wake of Katrina was
projected on a screen, along with other winning entries,
during the BSA annual conference at the University of Warwick,
Coventry, U.K.
Hanson’s exhibition
was chosen as the winner from among 44 entries from people
at 21 different institutions in the United Kingdom, Australia,
Austria, Italy, Russia and the United States.
“The judges were very impressed not only with the
way the photographs addressed the conference theme but also
with the process of collecting of images from the public
that you initiated and the success of the Bucket Brigade
in gaining compensation,” said Carol Wolkowitz, Department
of Sociology at the University of Warwick, of Hanson’s
exhibition.
As winner of the competition,
Hanson was awarded 250 British pounds. Winners of Special
Commendations were: David Baxter, University of Central
Lancashire; Marc Bush, University
of Surrey; Suellen Coles, University College of the Creative
Arts, Maidstone; Chris Gornall, University of Northumbria;
and Francois Pednault, University of Linz, Austria.
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