The Meet the Artist event that I went to for class was a opportunity to meet an internationally known photographer named Thomas Neff. Mr. Neff turned out to not be just a photographer but also a writer. His recent project that he has been working on and traveling for is a tribute to the Hurricane Katrina victims. He specifically was interested in the stories of the people who did not evacuate their houses and remained behind in the flooded city. He wrote a book using the pictures that he showed us and compiling them together with the stories of the people in them. Mr. Neff traveled to New Orleans as soon as the catastrophe occurred and personally tracked down every remaining inhabitant of the city while he was there.   He listened to their stories, helped to console them, and give them hope and even helped to evacuate the ones who would allow themselves to be removed. Many of the photographs that he showed us were of old men and women who had nothing left in the world besides their land and their city. You could say that they were too senile to understand the severity of the situation but i think that it was a deep sense of loyalty to their city as well as a pull from the history that was made there that kept many of the elderly men and women in their houses. Mr. Neff told us the situations that brought about each photo that he showed. Every person within the photo, you could tell, was very dear to him. And that's why I think people paid attention-we could tell that it was important to him. All of the pictures that he showed us were in black and white and he also told us about the kind of camera that he uses and why. He does not use a handheld camera-he uses an old wooden one with four legs and a black cloth that you throw over your head as you take the picture.