Seeing New Orleans' destruction in person was very different from watching it on TV at home. Mile after mile of neighborhoods were devastated. My first goal in making these photographs was to personalize the destruction and loss -- to give the images a "you are here" feeling that was intimate and individual for the viewer. Every place I photographed had been under at least ten feet of water for more than a week. The way building materials, fabrics and personal items were affected by this soaking in filthy salt water was like nothing I'd seen before. It was like 300 years of aging had taken place in the ten months since the storm.