Jacob Walker’s Tattoo, Isle de Jean Charles, Louisiana

Description

In 2005 photographer Kael Alford was sent to Louisiana by a Dutch magazine to document the effects of Hurricane Katrina. While on location, she visited an area of the coast where her maternal grandmother had been born and that is still home to the Native American communities from which she descends. What Alford discovered there would become the subject of a multi-year documentary project to record the disappearing cultural and physical landscapes of the region. Alford drew the title of her project, Bottom of da Boot, from the tattoos of the young man pictured here. He lives on an island that is eroding into the Gulf of Mexico at the pace of a football-field-sized area of ground each hour.