Isle de Jean Charles: A Photo Essay
Even when land is lost, lives—and lifestyles—endure
Three young men from nearby Chauvin set crab-lines. The enormous sky west of Isle de Jean Charles makes a gaudy backdrop for the basic human act of gathering dinner. Like much of coastal Louisiana, this place is slipping into the Gulf, but it remains glorious in its misused immensity. Lurid sunsets and vaguely unnerving masses of swaying salt-grass tell the real scope of the forces at play here. Nature, in its protean fullness, has control. Sky above, sea below, little in between.
Read more about the people of Isle de Jean Charles and their impending inland migration in our August 2017 story, "Permanent Culture."