“In Look and Leave, Jane Fulton Alt turns the human heart into a shutter lens. Her photographs and stories of the men, women, and families brought into New Orleans’s Lower Ninth Ward for a first look at the ruin and spoil of their homes is a pointed, quiet celebration of worthy lives, unbowed by devastation. These pictures will stay inside your heart and remind you how photographs can be, as a little girl sings through her surgical mask, ‘This little light of mine.”

“The most photogenic disaster in American history since the Civil War was met by photographers with an averted gaze, precisely because it was so photogenic. Alt realized, however, that photogeny is destiny, and she photographed the catastrophe the way it called for: photogenically. Brilliant head-on gazes at what was crying out there gave her camera a direct pass into the underworld of tragic beauty that was the storm. The pictures are the Destroyer’s official portraits. ”

“Once you call New Orleans home, she never leaves your soul. Her flavors, textures, sights, sounds, and, most importantly, her people live and breathe in the heart of every person lucky enough to know that special magic. Jane Fulton Alt’s photos and stories remind us all to rebuild and rejoice.”