Massachusetts-born Elena Ricci is a New Orleans based fine arts photographer. 

In the series, Home, she explores the space that people call home, the objects that fill these homes and how the occupants interact with their personal surroundings.

above: Selections from Home. Courtesy of the artist. 

French photographers Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre set out to document the decline of an American city. Their book The Ruins of Detroit, a document of decaying buildings frozen in time, was published in December 2010. They say:

Ruins are the visible symbols and landmarks of our societies and their changes, small pieces of history in suspension.

The state of ruin is essentially a temporary situation that happens at some point, the volatile result of change of era and the fall of empires. This fragility, the time elapsed but even so running fast, lead us to watch them one very last time: being dismayed, or admire, making us wondering about the permanence of things.

New Orleans, we have some competition.

New Orleans by way of New York, Michael Robinson Cohen is a multi-discipline architect, wood worker and designer. He recently completed Earth Wall II, a rammed earth construction, comprised of pouring a moist earth soil mixture into a board form and continuously compressing the earth with a tampering device. Upon reaching a desired height, the board forms are removed and solid earth wall is exposed. 

What we have is the beautiful finished product.

above: Earth Wall II, 2011. Pontchartrain Vineyards, Covington, Louisiana. [ in collaboration with Cody Campanie ].

Katherine Wolkoff is a multi-discipline photographer living and working in New York. She produced a stunning set of images in a 2008 post-Katrina landscape, in a series called Growth and Despair.