One year after Hurricane Katrina struck the United States’ Gulf Coast, the city of New Orleans, Louisiana, is a patchwork of recovery and neglect, as seen in these pairs of then-and-now photographs.
At top, cars cross over New Orleans’ Industrial Canal to the city’s Lower Ninth Ward in July 2006. Below, two men paddle by the same bridge on August 31, 2005, two days after Katrina made landfall, eventually causing levees to fail, flooding much of the city.
From The National Geographic: More here.