Between September 3 and 11, 2005, photographer Larry Towell, accompanied by Southern novelist Ace Atkins, traveled along the coast of Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi, documenting the dramatic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Towell's are not loud news pictures, but haunting and poetic landscapes-many of them panoramas-as well as photographs that depict the lives of ordinary people amidst the devastation. It is an intimate, documentary record of the hurricane's impact and a tribute to human endurance. For his afterword, Ace Atkins revisits the scenes of Towell's photographs nine months on, reflecting on how the communities of the coast have been able to rebuild their lives.
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Larry Towellis one of the world's leading photojournalists. In intimate photo-essays that combine his interests in history and poetry, Towell's series on El Salvador and the Mennonites are landmarks of the medium. Exhibited worldwide, he has been honored with the world's most prestigious photography prizes, including the W. Eugene Smith, Oskar Barnack, Roloff Beny, Alfred Eisenstadt, Hasselblad, and Henri Cartier-Bresson awards. His last book, No Man's Land,was awarded France's prestigious Nadar Prize. He lives on a farm in Ontario, Canada, and is a member of Magnum Photos.
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Ace Atkins, an Alabama native, earned nominations for the Pulitzer Prize and the Livingston Award for his work covering crime at The Tampa Tribune. Now a celebrated novelist (recent novels include Dark End of the Streetand Dirty South), Atkins also teaches at the University of Mississippi. He lives on a century-old farm outside Oxford, Mississippi.

Between September 3 and 11, 2005, photographer Larry Towell, accompanied by Southern novelist Ace Atkins, traveled along the coast of Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi, documenting the dramatic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Towell's are not loud news pictures, but haunting and poetic landscapes-many of them -panoramas-as well as photographs that depict the lives of ordinary people amidst the devastation. It is an intimate, documentary record of the hurricane's impact and a tribute to human endurance. For his afterword, Ace Atkins revisits the scenes of Towell's photographs nine months on, reflecting on how the communities of the coast have been able to rebuild their lives.