Eric Julien
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUPROWELL: What was your response to seeing New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and the flooding? What were your first impressions of the city?
JULIEN: Total destruction. It looked like images of Baghdad. Everything on the inside of most buildings from the Upper Ninth Ward to Claiborne Avenue was destroyed. Houses were lifted off the foundations and moved several blocks, piled on top of each other. There was a sense of awe and helplessness at the immense power of Mother Nature. Trash was everywhere, and the city smelled so bad. It was still very hot. It was awful. It was depressing. There was nothing that I felt I could do at the time, because I still had a son that was one year old. I definitely didn't think I'd be here cutting houses and putting him in this kind of environment. At that time, there weren't any jobs here. There was nothing here to do. You felt like, "Hey. It's time to leave."
ROWELL: What happened to your photography? Your portfolio of photographs that you had taken over the years?
JULIEN: Some things got ruined, but luckily I took my negatives with me. The photographs I left behind were ruined. Luckily I'm only two years younger than I was last year, so I don't have thirty years of work behind me as some people who couldn't
pack everything and take it with them. I could pack up three or four boxes of negatives. That's pretty easy to do.
ROWELL: So what do you describe as the impact of the hurricane and the flooding on you, as an individual, and then, ultimately, on you and your family?
JULIEN: On me as an individual? That's a complex question. I'm back here. I enjoy the city, as a photographer, as an artist. I'm still wandering around and looking at things and discovering. I'm trying to find—in the midst of all the destruction and things being abandoned—beauty. But beauty is not an appropriate word. Maybe I should say the horrible beauty in what's left behind, the horrible beauty in how nature is kind claiming things. [End Page 1147] And, as an individual, I'm working; I'm also laboring each day. On a day-to-day level, I enjoy what I do—much more than I would working in Chicago or working for someone else.
I was photographing this morning at Elmwood Elementary School, between Claiborne and Washington. That's uptown, but the elementary school's totally abandoned. The playground's overgrown, the classrooms are empty, and it's going to be a long time before schools reopen. Nobody's working on that elementary school. Hardly anybody is working on the public school buildings here in New Orleans. So it's going to be a long time before they ever reopen.
GORDON: How do you make money with photography in this city? Nobody around here will purchase photography.
JULIEN: Stella Jones, with her gallery, has been a great support. Middle-class blacks were in New Orleans East—doctors and lawyers and other professional blacks. They lived there, but New Orleans East is gone now. Luckily Stella Jones has been selling work out of town, out of state. Her only advice is to make art because you love doing it. When I went to Chicago, the African Americans there were really on top of it. They were really supportive and I've sold a lot of things in Chicago. So I'm actually going to be working between Houston, Atlanta, and Chicago. But this is where I get my vision and spirit . . . didn't take a picture in Chicago, couldn't take one in Houston, because it's so super-sprawled. But this is where I love to photograph—here in New Orleans.
ROWELL: For economic reasons, if you wanted to, could you do commercial photography, as well as art photography?
JULIEN: No...
