The devastation of Hurricane Katrina is still very much in evidence along the Gulf Coast, but the storm’s pain comes in even sharper waves when viewed through the spectrum of life before Aug. 29.

That trip through time is made possible by The Sun Herald in Biloxi, Miss., which began running its Before & After Katrina feature - in print and on the Web - last October.

The project is the brainchild of Sun Herald photographer John Fitzhugh, who began shooting pictures of structures in the three-county area surrounding Biloxi in 2004 before Hurricane Ivan.

Camille’s role

For Fitzhugh, the idea for the Before & After feature was fueled by years of Camille anniversary stories, and the impact of those images.  

When Hurricane Ivan turned away from Biloxi to Pensacola, Fla., he knew he had to use the good fortune of time to get more photos. But it was not until Hurricane Dennis began bearing down on the coast last year that Fitzhugh shot the bulk of his photos. He already had a number of “before” pictures at his disposal in The Sun Herald’s digital and print archives.

“As newspaper photojournalists we tend to photograph people much more than we photograph things and buildings, whereas 50 or 100 years ago they tended to just photograph streetscapes,” Fitzhugh said. “It’s a challenge going through our archives and finding stuff that I can match up by going out and getting the post-Katrina effect, but I’ve found quite a few.”

What has resulted is the daily feature in the print issue and a corresponding online gallery of those features repurposed for the Web site, www.sunherald.com. In addition to pictures, each Before & After includes personal stories as told by Sun Herald features writer Kat Bergeron.

Fitzhugh estimates he’s taken about 100 Before & After pairs of his own since he began shooting with this project in mind. That’s above and beyond all of the after shots he’s taken based on what’s been found in the archives.

To add to that, readers began submitting their own photos almost immediately after the feature began. Fitzhugh said about 40 percent of the photos used in the feature are reader-submitted.

In the five months the feature has ran, Fitzhugh has merely scratched the surface of The Sun Herald’s photo archive - he has yet to delve into the archive of printed photos.

Bringing it to life

It is Bergeron’s words coupled with the photos that make the stories real.

“What Kat has added to this brings home the concept that these aren’t just structures, there are people associated with these,” Fitzhugh said. “That’s what’s really important - the people, not the structures but the memories are obviously very heartfelt for these people.”

Telling those stories is not always an easy task, and one Bergeron sometimes equates to detective work.

“Even if we have a name, our phone book is no good anymore because so many businesses and homes are just gone,” she said.

As one of 70,000 Mississippi Gulf Coast residents that lost everything, the Before & After feature is personal to Bergeron and she relishes the opportunity to tell others’ stories.

“My whole purpose is not just to have pictures but to have the story of each one,” she said. “Not just, ‘OK, here’s the Biloxi Lighthouse before, and it was built in 1848 and it survived,’ but to actually tell the story.”

The Web version serves as a showcase of all of the photos that have run in the print feature. In addition to providing more space than print, the Web affords color to every shot, whereas pictures for the print edition are not always placed on a color page. Photos on the Web are categorized alphabetically into the three counties they cover - Harrison, Jackson and Hancock.

Knight Ridder Digital producer Charles Cornett, based in Kansas City, Mo., uses a mix of HTML and Macromedia Inc.’s Flash software to bring the features to life, showing readers the awesome contrast between pre- and post-Katrina.

Both Fitzhugh and Bergeron have been surprised at the reaction from the community. The response has been so great that The Sun Herald is in the midst of putting together a book, which will be a scaled back version of what has appeared in the newspaper.

In addition to telling the stories to the surrounding communities and the rest of the world (via the Web), Bergeron and Fitzhugh know the Before & After Katrina feature also plays an important healing role.

“Sometimes when you talk to these people you get off the phone and want to cry because there’s not really a future for that piece of property these people are losing,” Bergeron said. “But sometimes you hear this determination like, ‘I’m rebuilding.’”

There is no timeline for how long the feature will continue at this point. With unique monthly page views averaging 263,000 from November through January (Editor’s note: Monthly page views using the Flash feature averaged 210,500 for December through January.), and countless pictures yet to tackle, it will likely continue well into the year.

“I look around and I am just in shock at the loss of everything,” Bergeron said. “I’m not just talking about all the wonderful architecture, which is what we were known for, and  big expensive homes on the beach, but for example, I had a charming 1920s cottage and it’s gone. We’re missing businesses, churches - the number of churches is amazing - and in a daily feature we’ve hardly even scratched the surface.”

There are numerous other stories that will remain untold. Among the frustrations of the project, Fitzhugh said, is getting to a story too late.

“One day I went by this place and they had literally just started tearing this house down an hour before I got there,” he said. “Five months later, a lot of the stuff is gone and once a site has been mechanically cleared it doesn’t have the same impact.”