Photojournalist and documentarian Melanie Burford was a member of The Dallas Morning News photo team that won a Pulitzer for its 2006 coverage of Hurricane Katrina. She returned to Louisiana and the Gulf Coast last spring to document the human cost of the BP disaster, and next week she's taking a break from her teaching gig at Columbia University to bring these stories to the University of Puget Sound. Her lecture on Tuesday, Feb. 15 (6:30 p.m. in the Rasmussen Rotunda) will consider the topic, "The Monster Under the Water: Delacroix Island Fishermen Defend Their Marsh Against the BP Oil Spill." Her second lecture, the next evening at 6:30 p.m., will be in Kilworth Chapel and cover the "Eyes of the Storm: The Photographic Story of Hurricane Katrina From the Photographers at The Dallas Morning News." Both presentations are free, and the general public is encouraged to attend.

Ms. Burford is a 2009 Emmy winner for video documentary work in Texas. She discovers the human impact of stories that seem too big to face directly, as may be seen in transfixing images posted on her website, melanieburford.com. I was able to chat with her by phone in advance of her upcoming visit.

Delacroix Island, Burford explains, is "a small community in southern Louisiana" where the people are witnessing "the slow erosion of their lifestyle." She hopes the long-term damage will be less horrifying than some doomsayers predict; but, she adds, "(Residents) haven't actually seen the first season of crab that has been taken out of the Gulf since the oil spill. ... They still don't know the outcome. People are waiting to see." I asked her if she forms emotional bonds with her subjects. "You get to know them," she replies, "and they trust you with really intimate and private moments. ...  If someone's laying his emotional soul in your hands, you have to treat it well." Delacroix, she says, can be "a very insular, closed community, distrustful of a stranger in the midst of all this turmoil, especially someone from the media," so she's grateful for the hospitality of Gulf residents who remain in dire jeopardy. She's committed to their cause. "It's an area I care about. ... I'm not sure the story is over. I want to see what happens."

We talked about the national media's collective amnesia with regard to ecological disasters. "The drop-off was really dramatic when they realized there wasn't going to be another storm," Burford agrees. "The actual event itself has a certain layer of dramatic imagery, but people's lives don't stop when the media leave. People will continue to cope with whatever fallout there is. I'm not so much photographing a disaster, I'm photographing people who have to live in and around it, and how they mentally cope. ...  There has been a lot of pressure and fear and stress put onto the community, and it can't be underestimated."

Her final comments are a tribute to the lives behind the faces in her photos. "(These) are everyday people who love their land. They worship their land. They hunt. They fish. They get up at four in the morning and watch the sun rise over the bayou. Those are the people I'm spending time with. It's not so much about the oil to me, it's about these people who will do anything, who will fight to maintain that livelihood. ... They have a lot at stake, and to me they're rather extraordinary, and that's where I get my joy. I went out gator hunting and crabbing and shrimping (with them), so I'm just trying to photograph how they see their land, and trying to do justice to that."

Melanie Burford lectures

Tuesday, Feb. 15, 6:30 p.m., free
Rasmussen Rotunda, University of Puget Sound
1500 N. Warner St., Tacoma
253.879.2611

Wednesday, Feb. 16, 6:30 p.m., free
Kilworth Chapel, University of Puget Sound
1500 N. Warner St., Tacoma
253.879.2611