Paragliding above, Ben Depp reveals the beauty and tragedy of Louisiana’s coast

Ben Depp flies his powered paraglider in 2022.

PHOTO FROM BEN DEPP

Depp, 40, who is originally from North Carolina, spoke to The Times-Picayune | The Advocate about his art and the process behind it. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

How long have you been here now?

I moved to Louisiana in 2013 and learned about this issue of coastal erosion and wetland loss. I moved to Louisiana from Haiti. I lived in Haiti for five years, and I was working as a photographer. I was there for the earthquake in 2010 and photographed that, and cholera outbreaks and political unrest, and it was during my time in Haiti that I really became interested in environmental storytelling. I came to see just how intertwined environmental health is with human health. And because of that environmental degradation in Haiti, there’s just so much additional human suffering. And when I moved to Louisiana in 2013, I immediately learned about coastal issues here, and was interested in spending time on the coast and photographing the coast because it’s the largest area of wetlands in the U.S. and one of the fastest-eroding coasts in the world.

I wasn’t sure how I wanted to photograph it. And then flying out of New Orleans on a commercial flight, I saw this landscape from above, I was just really floored by it. It’s just incredible and surreal and beautiful. I decided that I wanted to try to make some aerial photographs, kind of look at the coast that way.

Rock breaks slow erosion in Cameron Parish in 2017.

PHOTO FROM BEN DEPP

That’s how you came to the paragliding idea?

Yeah, I learned about powered paragliding. I went and did a five-day training in Florida and bought some used equipment and started doing it. Powered paragliders may be the world’s smallest aircraft. I put a little gas engine on my back with a propeller on it, and I have a paraglider wing overhead. It’s an inexpensive way to get up in the air and look around.

“Tide Lines” book cover.

PHOTO FROM BEN DEPP

What were some of the more striking pictures you took or things you saw from that vantage point?

Some of the most striking things are just how incredibly beautiful these wetlands are — just so biodiverse and productive. It’s unbelievable just how many fish and birds I see out there. I know what I’m seeing is just a shadow of what south Louisiana used to be, but it’s still pretty incredible.

One of my favorite places is the Atchafalaya Basin. It’s one of the more intact areas of wetlands, and I think it may also last the longest into the future because of how it’s oriented going inland. One of the other things I’ve been struck by recently is seeing how quickly wetlands are building up on the east side of the Mississippi River in Plaquemines Parish around some of these places where there are breaks in the levees. Places that were open water just a couple of years ago and are now filled in with sediment from the river and vegetation is growing.

Like Mardi Gras Pass and Neptune Pass?

Exactly. I was over there this past week, and there are places that I photographed in 2014 that I can’t even recognize now because it’s all filled in with land. It’s also striking – it’s just nuts — how large areas of the coast just also seem exhausted by human enterprise. Places like Golden Meadow, where you can see a checkerboard of spoil banks, where canals cut through coastal prairie in every direction. It was prairie and it’s now converted to open water — these miles and miles of just scraps of canal spoil banks.

The retreating shoreline in Cameron Parish is seen after being battered by Hurricane Laura, a Category 4 storm that struck the coast Aug. 27, 2020.

PHOTO FROM BEN DEPP

When you see some of these before-and-after pictures or pictures from above, it always puts it in perspective how much land is being lost. Was that something that also surprised you? Or did you already have a good enough idea of that when you did it?

I think I have a good idea of that, but still I’m often surprised by how quickly places do change, like after Hurricane Ida. Just seeing that damage on the coast was striking and just really impressive.