Cancer Alley: Istrouma to the Gulf of Mexico

Along the banks of the Mississippi River, a neglected part of the United States is bearing the brunt of the shale boom as a wildfire of new construction and the expansion of single-use plastic facilities and export terminals assault an environment with long-term investments, facilitating a pattern of violence against communities for the sake of carbon profits.1 This series of Cancer Alley collages layers evidence found in the public record with what I have witnessed as a photographer, reconstructing a history of the lower Mississippi River through the manipulation of US Geological Survey maps. Over time, families were forced to leave Manchac Point, first for the Army Corps of Engineers levee infrastructure after the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, and later, in the late 1990s, for Dow Chemical to create a natural buffer or "green zone" around its facility. Dow's Plaquemine plant produces chlorine and polyethylene, which are found in "cosmetics, detergents, solvents, pharmaceuticals, adhesives, plastics for a variety of packaging, automotive parts, electronics components, and more." The old plantation grounds are now fallow, some cattle graze fields, but the land is covered by white oil tanks and access roads with names like the Department of Energy Road across from the old St. James Cemetery.