H.C. Porter

The distinctive multimedia paintings of Vicksburg artist H.C. Porter captures everyday moments in the lives of Mississippians, offering the world a contemporary Southern vision. In September 2005, two weeks after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf coast, the focus of Porter's work shifted to telling the visual stories of those putting their lives back together. For the next year, Porter captured black and white portraits that would serve as the basis of her paintings,while collaborator Karole Sessums recorded the voices of those being photographed.

What Porter and Sessums found on the Mississippi Gulf Coast was larger and even more astounding than the hurricane's destruction. Amidst the wreckage, they discovered the remarkable human spirit of an entire population — a people who had just lost everything, yet who remained focused on what really mattered in life.

Porter's paintings and Sessums' field recordings were combined in an extraordinary merger of art, history, and humanity and unveiled in the form of a traveling exhibition, from which this beautiful book was drawn and adapted.

Signed first edition.