Into the Quiet and the Light: Water, Life, and Land Loss in South Louisiana

by Virginia Hanusik

In South Louisiana, where the Mississippi River meets the Gulf of Mexico, water―and the history of controlling it―is omnipresent. Into the Quiet and the Water, Life, and Land Loss in South Louisiana glimpses the vulnerabilities and possibilities of living on the water during an ongoing climate catastrophe and the fallout of the fossil fuel industry―past, present, and future. The book sustains our physical, mental, and emotional connections to these landscapes through a collection of photographs by Virginia Hanusik. Framing the architecture and infrastructure of South Louisiana with both distance and intimacy, introspection and expansiveness, this work engages new memories, microhistories, anecdotes, and insights from scholars, artists, activists, and practitioners working in the region. Unfolding alongside and in dialogue with Hanusik’s photographs, these reflections soberly and hopefully populate images of South Louisiana’s built and natural environments, opening up multiple pathways that defy singularity and complicate the disaster-oriented imagery often associated with the region and its people. In staging these meditations on water, life, and land loss, this book invites readers to join both Hanusik and the contributors in reading multiplicity into South Louisiana’s water-ruled landscapes.

With Richie Blink, Imani Jacqueline Brown, Jessica Dandridge, Rebecca Elliott, Michael Esealuka, T. Mayheart Dardar, Billy Fleming, Andy Horowitz, Arthur Johnson, Louis Michot, Nini Nguyen, Kate Orff, Jessi Parfait, Amy Stelly, Jonathan Tate, Aaron Turner, and John Verdin.

Genres: Art

184 pages, Hardcover

Published August 20, 2024

Reviews

[Emilie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Virginia Hanusik, aware of the camera’s urge to turn tragedy to spectacle, breaks with the usual aerial footage of natural disasters. Instead, she depicts a daily reality shaped by the same water it looks to soon be consumed by. Rather than depict catastrophe, she shows the landscape itself to be a warning – the cover, a tree grown crooked from a mutilated base and recurring images of houses precariously balanced on stilts. An architecture of crisis with a base of outdated, precast concrete and subsequent solutions added on. Yet these 15 ft poles only secure individual homes, leaving the roots of destruction untouched. Imani Jacqueline Brown captures this beautifully in her included piece: “But if Louisiana's wetlands have been lost, who lost them? No hands raised, no names named. A territory conquered without flags. Yet the architects of our disintegration are knowable, perceptible. We see their logos planted like colonizers' flags on our schools and festivals, emblazoning our basketball courts and lurking within our courts of law — a crude diversion.”

Despite such valuable contextualisation, I’m not sure that Hanusik is right when she claims that “This book resists that spectacle.” Citing Robert Adams, she confirms the urge to leave behind the shock of violence and “discover[] things in sunlight” through the viewfinder. Though you can hear the voices of its inhabitants, you may also notice the voice of Burtynsky in ‘Anthropocene: The Human Epoch’ who, standing in the midst of a town tearing itself apart to make space for a dam, mutters the detached “beautiful” of the photographer.

[Caroline Moore · Rating 5 out of 5]

A powerful collection of photos, essays, poems, and interviews about a topic that doesn’t get nearly enough attention. Referring to oil as Louisiana’s golden handcuffs was beautifully devastatingly true. Fuck Shell for their permanent damage, “for a land that was cut to make shortcuts.”

[Ed · Rating 3 out of 5]

The photography is great. The essays not so much.

[Dan Moses · Rating 5 out of 5]

Into the Quiet and the Light is like going into an art gallery and having storytellers illuminate the photographs. The images and words of Southeastern Louisiana have a stark quality. The reader has to face a barrenness in the landscape - an outcome from years of man-made and natural disasters - along with the adaptations from the people that have resolved to stay. This book is beautiful in a way that the best stories, with all of the complexities of humanity, often are.

[Zane Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great series of essays and photos about the impact of industry and climate change on the Louisiana bayou. The photo on the cover says it all: something very old, so old it is broken, but something new is growing out of it; but will the new growth thrive or is it already dead?

[Leigh Christy · Rating 3 out of 5]

A haunting collection of images from a land and the communities who settled there. The accompanying introduction informs us as to the situation in flux and sets up our POV with which to engage the collection, but the subsequent written pieces don’t add a much as I hoped to the conversation.

[C · Rating 4 out of 5]

This powerful book about land loss and the destruction of the historically rich and abundant landscapes of southeastern Louisiana is a stunning call to action. Alongside what are often haunting anything-but-still-life images of built landscapes by Hanusik are moving essays, poems, vignettes, and histories of the region, many by and about the indigenous (Houma, Choctaw, & Chitimacha) protectors and cultivators of the land, and the descendants of enslaved Black Africans and African Americans who've worked the disappearing marshes for centuries. After Hanusik foregrounds INTO THE QUIET AND THE LIGHT with a background of the history of exploitation of natural resources by colonial powers in Louisiana dating back to the seventeenth century, her book soars into the present with the juxtaposed beauty of a land and its peoples against the omnipresent force of destruction and greed from the petrochemical industry and its forebears of global capitalism, racism, and all else that fuels climate catastrophe.