Photos tell emotional story of how Harvey touched city
No major storm has been more documented to date than Hurricane Harvey, thanks to smart phones and social media.
So FotoFest had no problem gathering images from the public for “Seeing Harvey,” a show marking the storm’s first anniversary. It received about 500 submissions and accepted 400 from the Houston community, most of which will loop on slide shows. Another section of the show features about 50 images and several videos by Houston Chronicle photographers. “Deluge,” a companion exhibition, features images and a five-channel video installation by Gideon Mendel, who has focused on flooding around the world for 11 years.
So what makes the work of professional photojournalists different from the plethora of images captured by “regular” people? Many things, actually, starting with a deadline-focused job and a sense of obligation to go where the most compelling story is, during the midst of disaster, carrying professional equipment.
The works from the Chronicle’s Harvey archives offer just a glimpse of the thousands of images that the newspaper’s 11 photographers captured during the storm and its aftermath, including stories that are still playing out. In the early going, especially, the flooding made travel harrowing, and intense rains and humidity played havoc with equipment.
Photojournalism is incredibly hard on camera gear under any circumstances, said Chronicle photo editor Jasmine Goldband, who helped curate the company’s images. “As a photographer, you’re always worried about lighting, exposure and composi-
tion. But what happens when your back up of your back up fails? We were going on third-string cameras, and then it just started to get silly because people had to juggle around.”
Some of the best work, however, had less to do with overcoming physical hardships, equipment failures or deadlines and more to do with the photojournalists’ compassion for fellow human beings.
Jon Shapley
On Sept. 5, Jon Shapley parked and walked through a northeast Houston neighborhood for a story about a baseball team helping to muck out a home. He’d never seen so much flood debris. Trash was piled 8 to 10 feet on both sides of the street. After meeting up with the team, he decided to walk farther down the street. He happened upon Ric Saldivar, who told Shapley his brother had been driving the van that was swept off a bridge, killing his parents and two younger relatives.
Shapley’s first instinct was simply to listen. “In that moment, it’s kind of, oh, wow; you sort of engage as a person,” he said. “It was less about trying to get a story than being there for somebody who was in pain.” He ended up hanging out with Saldivar and his daughter Rikki for three hours that day.
The Saldivars were trying to salvage photographs from their flooded home, and Shapley stayed to help, pulling out and separating pictures from water-logged plastic bins. He hardly took any photos, as he recalls it — no more than 25 the entire time. But when Rikki Saldivar spread Polaroids around herself on the ground, he instinctively saw a visual moment, stood over her and shot. It was an awkward position but wasn’t weird because they’d been talking for so long, he said. “The human connection goes a really long way.”
Michael Ciaglo
On Aug. 30, exhibit halls at the George R. Brown Convention Center held thousands of evacuees. Reporters were not allowed inside, but Michael Ciaglo knew that’s where the pictures were. The scene was still chaotic. “A benefit of chaos is that it’s, well, chaotic,” Ciaglo said. He waited for some police officers to pass, held his cameras low to the ground and walked into the rear of the hall behind someone pulling a large cart. He did not start shooting right away. He just talked to people about what they’d been through.
He was pretty sure he’d be seen and kicked out at any moment. But the people with whom he engaged seemed to want to talk. Then he spotted a couple asleep, holding each other. He apologized for waking them, told them who he was, and asked if they’d mind if he took their picture. They gave permission, and their names — Tammy and Christopher Dominguez — and went back to sleep.
Evacuees who had cell phones could take pictures, but Ciaglo hesitated to share a story that involved disobeying the authorities. “Rules are made in these situations for the greater good,” he said. Still, he felt obliged to show the world what was happening inside the building. “Yes, this is tough. That’s why we need to show it,” he said. “The pictures also need to be taken with tact, humility and sensitivity.”
Brett Coomer
Documenting the scope of the disaster from a helicopter, Brett Coomer wasn’t always sure exactly where he was. But he looked for images of people being evacuated. “We were showing the world these people needed help,” he said. “You’re trying to show how bad things are, and that people are suffering … without exploiting them.”
Also a veteran of Katrina coverage, he remembered putting his cameras down after he got his first images in New Orleans. “There was a sense of, now it’s time to help,” he said. “You’ve got to be human at some point.”
Elizabeth Conley
After spending her first Harvey assignment navigating flooded highways for six hours, Elizabeth Conley met up with reporter Nancy Sarnoff at the George R. Brown Convention Center as the first evacuees arrived. Conley photographed Peg and Ron Sauter after Sarnoff interviewed them; they were displaced from an assisted living apartment building on Memorial Drive that still has not reopened. The couple had just celebrated an anniversary, and while their situation wasn’t as dire as others, Conley showed respect. “You’re catching people at their most vulnerable moment,” she said.
The story didn’t end there. For a recent beforeand-after piece, Conley checked in with the Sauters and photographed the couple in their new apartment. They kissed for her, again.
Melissa Phillip
After meeting up with a reporter in South Houston on Aug. 28, Melissa Phillip drove north across town, to a place she’d heard evacuations were happening. The situation she now calls “the Tidwell thing” yielded one of the most iconic images of Harvey — the flotilla that could be seen in the pouring rain from an overpass on Beltway 8. Phillip heard the Coast Guard helicopters, even though she couldn’t see them — the sky was too obscured. She passed lines of parked trucks with empty boat trailers, a sign the rescuers were using the highway’s on/off ramps as boat launches. “It was quite a spectacular sight, this massive convergence of people — the first responders and authorities with all these fishermen and boaters putting themselves at risk,” she said.
Phillip also had taken one of the most iconic images of Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath in 2005, of an elderly woman dying in a wheelchair, when outside emergency help didn’t arrive for nearly a week. “This was a totally different animal,” she said.