Kris Arnold Photo's photostream  

From very earliest beginnings, I feel i was destine to work as a photo journalist. My Grandfather was a veteran of World War II, serving in the Pacific Theater during the war. He had always been very keen to current events.

His whole life he was an avid news junky. Every weekend I would spend at his house digging thru stacks of Time Magazine and old newspaper clippings he had kept from years past. Along side old family photos from the 1800's all the way up to the 1980's

As a teenager living in Greencastle, IN i would regular go to the DePauw Library and dig thru old microfinch reels, reading about everything I could find about the towns past.

In 2005 I visited New Orleans for the first time and Immediately fell in love. Then as everyone knows, Hurricane Katrina destroyed the city and a large portion of the gulf coast.

A photo was published in Time Magazines 2005 Photos of the year that changed my path forever. The photo was that of a body laying face down on Claiborne St just underneath the underpass of I-10. I knew immediatly that i must go back and see it for myself.

The first thing I did upon returning to New Orleans was take a picture of my son holding up the 2 page spread standing right where the body had once laid.

At that time I was only armed with a simple sony DSC-40 point and shoot camera that i had owned for years. But I had returned with photographs that touched so many people, and an experience that would completly alter my perception of life and my reason for being on this earth.

The next month I sold everything I could part with and purchased my first DSLR so that i could return to new orleans to photograph the first mardi gras after the hurricane.

I had taken my favorite photographs from that day and created a book on my computer with iphoto. Setup a booth at Jazz Fest in indianapolis, and sold only 2 copies of the book. the second copy was purchased by a lady from new orleans that had been relocated here after the hurricane.

When she opened the book she began to burst into tears, thanked me, and left, clutching the copy in her hands.

If I hadn't know before I knew then what I must do with the rest of my life.