In March, a mudslide levelled one square mile in and around the rural community of Oso, Washington. The disaster killed forty-one people and left two missing; it was one of the deadliest landslides in America’s history. David Kasnic, a twenty-four-year-old photographer who lives in Brooklyn, grew up three hours east of Oso, in Wenatchee, Washington. After a month of watching news coverage of the event from afar, Kasnic travelled back to his home state to photograph the aftermath. “What I’m curious about is how a community attempts to return to normalcy, whatever that may be,” he told me. “What happens to the debris area, where the mudslide occurred? Does it become a memorial site?” Kasnic says that, by the time he arrived in Oso, many people wanted a break from the media coverage: “Places had cameras crossed out in circles on their doors.” Still, he says, people tended to open up to him when they learned that he was from Wenatchee. “It reminds me so much of the town I grew up in,” Kasnic said. He’s already thinking about a return trip. “One month from now, one year from now, I’d like to follow this work through so that I can leave something behind.”
All photographs by David Kasnic.
