The Power of Photos
Letter from the editor
After sixteen years of living in Wilmington, we’re no strangers to hurricane season – the prepping, the hunkering down, the sometimes false alarms, and in the case of Floyd in 2019 cleaning up and helping neighbors after massive flooding.
It’s part of the trade-off for living by the coast in the same way you become well-versed in tornado and earthquake warnings in other parts of the country.
That’s why Hurricane Helene and the massive damage it caused to the mountain towns of North Carolina last year were, in part, surprising. By the coast, we saw the flooding and wind damage hours away from where we had seen it happen before. Helene, the deadliest hurricane in North Carolina in recent times, caused at least $53 billion in damage and recovery needs, according to the state.
In the days and weeks after the fall season hurricane, Wilmingtonians – many of whom have been on the receiving end of outside support and aid during previous storms – gathered supplies and caravaned across the state to try and make deliveries of water, diapers, and food where they could access.
A month after the storm, Ben Folds sold out Greenfield Lake Amphitheater for a benefit concert to raise money for relief efforts.
Support for Western North Carolina came from all points geographically, but I think it struck a particular chord for our region, which has seen firsthand the devastating impacts of hurricane damage.
Earlier this year, Wilmington photographer Danielle Desnoyers reached out to WILMA with a story about another Wilmington photographer Allison Joyce.
She said that Joyce, who has photographed stories for the magazine before, had spent the past year splitting her time between Wilmington and Western North Carolina to document the continued physical and emotional toll Helene continues to hold on parts of the region.
Her work in the weeks and months after Helene has been published in national and international outlets, and one year after the storm, we wanted to share them with our readers, as well.
Desnoyers also details what it’s like being a photojournalist like Joyce arriving in a natural disaster but staying to continue to show what happens after the national focus shifts away and communities remain to rebuild.
Click here to read more about Joyce’s work and see her powerful stories about our neighbors six hours away.
Vicky Janowski, WILMA editor
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