Getty Photographer Reflects On Past Year in New Orleans

By: Sarah Weber Mario Tama bears witness to human suffering and redemption for a living. A photojournalist for Getty Images since 2001, and the recipient of the NYPAA 2006 Photographer of the Year award, Tama has trained his lens on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the city of New York on Sept. 11th, and the city of New Orleans as it succumbed to the waters of Hurricane Katrina, capturing many award-winning, iconic images.

On the cusp of the one-year anniversary of Katrina, Tama spoke with E&P from New Orleans. Over the sound of laborers hammering on nearby roofs, Tama told of his hopes for the city, and how his profession has helped him give a voice to the victims.

Tama will remain in New Orleans for the first-year anniversary, and though other stories may take him elsewhere, he is intent on returning again and again. ?I don?t intend to forget about it,? he said resolutely. ?I hope that the rest of the world doesn?t either.?

Tama, 35, had a eureka moment when he was a student at the Rochester Institute of Technology in the early 1990s. Originally interested in landscape photography, he had a change of heart once he was exposed to the work of famous photojournalists like Carol Guzy and James Nachtwey.

?I became completely fascinated by these worlds that they were exploring,? Tama said, ?and the fact that they could bring some social consciousness to the rest of the world. I felt like it was a noble thing to do.?

After freelancing for several years for The Washington Post and Agence France-Presse, among others, Tama found himself at Getty. The creative freedom and challenges he found there suited Tama well.

?Getty has put together this team that tries to go out there and cover the story in a different way than other wires,? said Tama. ?We try to look at each side and every angle, and shoot stories that aren?t necessarily the sort of mainstream look.?

Almost a year after the tragedy of New Orleans, Tama has been unhappy to find that shooting the continuation of life there has often fallen outside the mainstream as well. ?I?m not saying that the press is totally ignoring these kinds of things,? Tama conceded. ?It kind of seems to ebb and flow.

?But to think of a city, an American city, that is still 50% destroyed and uninhabitable, and it?s not on the front page every day?it?s bizarre.?

Perhaps, Tama suggests, the lack of coverage until the anniversary approached (or ?Katrina fatigue,? as he calls it) is due to misconceptions or lack of understanding about New Orleans. ?It?s hard, if you haven?t been to New Orleans, to perhaps have that connection,? Tama said. ?But when you see what a cultural treasure it is, and how much of our history has evolved out of this place?it becomes extra sad for me that it?s not being rebuilt.?

Tama first arrived in New Orleans almost 48 hours before the storm hit the city. He was soon joined by another Getty staffer, Mark Wilson, and a freelance photographer from New Orleans. As with the rest of the city, Tama and the Getty crew were shocked by what happened next: ?We didn?t think it would head right towards us.?

With resilience and an acutely empathetic eye, Tama captured the devastation through the faces of the victims. A young father holds his three-month old daughter and locks his stare onto the distant highway as helicopters swirl overhead. A haggard resident, hat slung low, hands moving for a bottle of liquor, averts his eyes from a blazing house as he walks through the water. And, in a tableau of almost biblical proportions, the Super Dome, strewn with refuse and housing a few remaining occupants, is struck with a beam of light that blazes through the middle of the image.

It remains Tama?s mission to continue to capture such moving glimpses into the agonizingly slow process of recovery that is taking place in New Orleans.

?People always say there?s no place like New Orleans,? he said. ?This is their home, and they?re going to come back and do it one way or another.

?That is a recurring theme in my work, that even in the most dire of situations, people never lose hope.?

For more information on Mario Tama, and to view his photographs, visit the Getty Images Web site, or Tama's own.