504–907: A multimodal comparison of Louisiana and Alaska

Abstract 504–907 is a comparative visual ethnography linking Louisiana and Alaska through the shared experiences of oil, disaster, and waste. While these regions are often imagined as opposites—subtropical versus Arctic—they are bound together by the same wasting relationships that Marco Armiero identifies as the Wasteocene: processes that produce wasted people and wasted places. Drawing on my own experiences growing up in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the Deepwater Horizon spill, and subsequent fieldwork in both Louisiana and Alaska, I approach these landscapes through walking, photographing, and pairing. At the core of 504–907 are photographic diptychs organized into three categories: building portraits, people, and things seen on walks. These pairings juxtapose structures like grocery stores and bars, moments of kinship from crawfish boils to basketball games, and everyday details like mismatched chairs and patched storefronts. Rather than contrasting differences for its own sake, the diptychs highlight how ordinary materials, practices, and rituals register disaster and survival. Following Jerome Krase's notion of “urban vernacular landscapes,” I argue for a visual semiotics of the Wasteocene, one that makes visible how waste materializes in peeling paint, improvised repairs, and the persistence of community events. This project demonstrates how comparative photography can serve as both an ethnographic method and a theoretical intervention. By treating the ordinary as archive, 504–907 reframes Louisiana and Alaska not as extremes, but as resonant sites of endurance. The diptychs reveal how resilience emerges in the face of collapse, offering a visual vocabulary for the everyday labor of survival in the Wasteocene.