My Sacred Canon

In honor of the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, how I came to revere a Canon PowerShot SD400 camera as a sacred object.

Aug 29, 2025

Almost two years before the release of the Apple iPhone that started a revolution in personal photography and video recording, Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast with a force that devastated small towns and coastal communities alike. In Mississippi, the storm surge affected the entire 57 miles of coastline and penetrated 6 to 12 miles inland along bays and rivers. It then fired off a chain of events that caused unfathomable flooding in the City of New Orleans.

In those days, I relied on the sleek, trend-setting Motorola Razr for mobile communication. I loved that flip phone for all the things we used to, and in some cases still do, love about mobile phones—superb design, convenience, and functionality. Although it had camera capabilities, I can’t remember ever using it as a camera. Instead, I had an equally slick Canon PowerShot SD400.

This little camera went with me everywhere, including to Hattiesburg, Mississippi, in September 2005, when I volunteered at a Red Cross shelter to provide mental health support for victims of Hurricane Katrina.

The people in the shelter had lost everything and had much to grieve, including loved ones—human and animal—who had died or gone missing. But after these loses, many of them grieved most over the loss of family photos.

Armed with my Canon PowerShot and a compact portable printer I had fortuitously thrown in my suitcase when I packed for the trip, I offered to take photos of the families I met there. Before long, word had spread throughout the chaos of the shelter and people queued up to get their photos taken.

Kids especially fell in love with this little camera. When I arrived at the shelter for my shift one day, a group of kids ran up to me and told me that they had rehearsed a play for me to video record. They, of course, wanted it recorded “right now!” When I told them I had to check in with the other volunteers and spend a little time with my adult clients, their disappointment was hard to contain. But they waited as patiently as they could until I gave word that I was ready.

After their performance, I held the tiny screen out for them to see what they had produced.

“Again!” one shouted. “Show it to us again!” They adored watching themselves as they fought for position to get the best view.

And on and on it went for the remainder of my shift that day and every day that followed.

As I returned to New Orleans and the Gulf over the next year and beyond, my faithful PowerShot accompanied me. In November, 2005, I took it into New Orleans for the first time where I captured unimaginable devastation even ten weeks, then six months, then a year, then two years later, and beyond.

When a new job and other disasters eventually prevented me from continuing Katrina disaster relief trips, I retired my trusty camera. By then I had an iPhone and no need to carry a second device. For the past fifteen years, my Canon has lived on my personal altar as a reminder of the power and resilience of people facing inconceivable challenges.

My personal altar with the Canon PowerShot prominently displayed

Even to this day, I consider this camera sacred. It captured lives grasping for some semblance of humanity at a time when all had been lost. The camera, and more importantly, the people whose images it captured, gives me hope, especially in this time filled with disasters of our own making.

I don’t know where the people I photographed are today. I looked up one of the children who I developed a special connection with and found that, on Facebook, she describes herself this way.

She has 2,444 friends and a good job in technology. I’d say she made it through the storm!

I pulled the camera off my altar yesterday, dusted it off, and for old times sake, turned it on. I didn’t expect a response after all these years, so I was shocked to discover that the old girl still has life. It fired right up! The battery crashed pretty quickly, but I smiled anyway.

Digging through a box of cables—you know, the one we all have with every cable we might need some day—I was equally surprised to find the battery charger. The camera’s all charged up now. Maybe I’ll take it on my next trip and see what it’s like to leave my iPhone behind.

In the meantime, here are a few of the children and families I had the privilege to photograph (or, in the case of these ones I’m in, my camera photographed in someone else’s hands) twenty years ago next month. I pray they’ve found health and happiness in whatever life they were able to create after Katrina uprooted everything they had known.