Coming Back: New Orleans Resurgent

Photographs by Mario Tama

July – September, 2010

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Umbrage Editions is proud to announce our forthcoming exhibition, COMING BACK: NEW ORLEANS RESURGENT, featuring the imagery captured by Getty Images photographer Mario Tama.

Of the vast amount of media coverage that shocked the nation and caused a moral outcry of conscience at governmental mismanagement and near-criminal inaction, the images by photographer Mario Tama were, simply, among the best. But this project is also singular and memorable for the next chapter which Mario Tama has also covered so thoroughly and sensitively. Remarkably, when the catastrophe waned and other press went away, Tama stayed with the support and encouragement of his colleagues at Getty Images and continued to document the process of recovery (and some of its terrible failures). His constancy has resulted in a large and moving body of work that displays the resilience of the human spirit even amid such immense struggle, creating an optimistic portrait of New Orleans rather than one of only destruction. He is, in short, a man of great visual gifts, also gifted with a generous and open heart. With a journalist’s determination, an artist’s eye, and a humanitarian’s heart, he eloquently captures on film the essence of disaster alongside the desire for hope and change.

An exhibition opening simultaneously at Umbrage Gallery, New York and in New Orleans, will accompany the launch of the book and a portion of the proceeds will go New Schools for New Orleans, a non-profit organization at the heart of a remarkably successful effort to overhaul public education in a recovering city.