Lake Pontchartrain

Lake Pontchartrain is the great brackish estuary on the northern edge of New Orleans — about 630 square miles of shallow water, crossed by the Causeway, which at nearly 24 miles is one of the longest continuous bridges over water in the world. For all its size, the lake is rarely more than fifteen feet deep; it reads as an inland sea, the far shore lost below the horizon.

Photographed on Lake Pontchartrain in 1997, in black and white. The lake's scale and flatness suit monochrome — it becomes a study in horizontals, water meeting sky with almost nothing to interrupt the line.