Nine months after hurricane Katrina and 26 days before the start of the 2006 hurricane season, parts of New Orleans seem untouched by clean up or renovation efforts. Kleen Dry Cleaners of St. Bernard’s Parish, La., is empty and windowless. It is one of the few structures that had been gutted on that street. May 2006.

From one of the few running buses one can observe that much of the city still deserted and in need of reconstruction including this Thrift City right off the main avenue.

A home in the Ninth Ward neighborhood where the water had reached the ceiling, as the sediment left behind shows. May 2006, New Orleans, La.

Blocks from where the first levee broke in the Ninth Ward neighborhood of New Orleans, La., a tree and three houses pushed off their foundations by the force of the water had smashed together, and still blocked the street completely in, May 2006.

A home in the Ninth Ward neighborhood of New Orleans, La. Here, after the water receded, a layer of cracked sediment blanketed the floor, May 2006.