PHOTO ESSAY: 20 years after Hurricane Katrina, these then-and-now photos show the power of place

The power of place is real.

In an increasingly virtual world, the physical spots where momentous things happened remain potent — and able to evoke some of our deepest-cutting moments.

That was the thinking behind these photos from New Orleans on the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. By projecting images of places at some of their worst moments onto the way those places and neighborhoods appear now, something of a rudimentary visual time machine emerges.

The photos haunt. They bring back the chaos and fear of those jumbled days two decades ago. Images of moments captured and gone — water pushing up against buildings, makeshift memorials, empty roads with the projection of the days when people were using them in desperate bids to get out.

In one frame, the wreckage and rubble outside a house in 2005 is projected, at night, against the house as it stands today. In another, a woman, huddled up, wrapped in an American flag, braces herself against the elements and the world around him. Today, projected against a building, it is a phantom portal into another era.

Photography freezes and preserves moments. By having those moments touch time — reappearing in the city, in the spots where they happened in the first place — the power of the photos is magnified.

Remembering history is grounded in summoning the past in vivid and relevant ways. By bringing August 2005 in New Orleans to August 2025, a generation later, these photos show not only what disaster looked like, but what recovery and moving on look like as well.

This photo showing flood victims sitting at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center where they had been waiting for days to be evacuated in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, taken by AP photographer Eric Gay, is projected Tuesday, Aug. 26, 2025, along the Mississippi River behind the convention center. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

This photo of the FEMA markings indicating a deceased victim in the home of Michael Harrison, who died inside during Hurricane Katrina in Bay St. Louis, Miss., taken by AP photographer Gerald Herbert, nephew of Harrison, is projected Tuesday, Aug. 26, 2025, onto his grave in Pass Christian, Miss. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

This photo of a poodle perching itself precariously upon a pile of trash while surrounded by floodwaters in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, taken by AP photographer Rick Bowmer, is projected Thursday, Aug. 21, 2025, onto a house in a neighborhood that was flooded by the storm. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

This photo showing the body of a flood victim tied to a telephone pole in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, taken by AP photographer Steven Senne, is projected Monday, Aug. 18, 2025, onto the same spot the original photo was taken. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

This photo of a young man wading through chest-deep floodwaters in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, taken by AP photographer Dave Martin, is projected Monday, Aug. 25, 2025, next to a mural of New Orleans music legend Allen Toussaint, below the overpass where the original photo was made. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

This photo of Valerie Thomas and her nieces Shante Fletcher, 6, and Sarine Fletcher, 11, viewing the destruction of her brother’s home in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, taken by AP photographer Gerald Herbert, is projected Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2025, onto the same block, while a heat lightning storm illuminates the clouds. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

This photo of receding floodwaters leaving their mark on a house and automobile on Orleans Avenue in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, taken by AP photographer Ric Francis, is projected Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2025, onto the same house. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

This photo of Milvertha Hendricks, 84, waiting in the rain with other flood victims outside the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, taken by AP photographer Eric Gay, is projected Monday, Aug. 25, 2025, next to statues of the king and queen of Mardi Gras next to the center. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

This photo of people taking goods from stores on Canal Street in downtown New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, taken by AP photographer Eric Gay, is projected Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2025, onto a storefront in the same location. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

This photo of a New Orleans resident walking through floodwaters coated with a fine layer of oil in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, taken by AP photographer Bill Haber, is projected Thursday, Aug. 14, 2025, in New Orleans, underneath the same overpass where photo was made. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

This photo showing throngs of New Orleans residents gathering at a evacuation staging area along Interstate 10 in Metairie, La., in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, taken by AP photographer Dave Martin, is projected Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2025, onto the same roadway. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

This photo of a makeshift tomb at a New Orleans street corner, concealing a body that had been lying on the sidewalk for days in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, taken by AP photographer Dave Martin, is projected onto the same sidewalk Tuesday, Aug. 19, 2025, in New Orleans. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

This photo of a man pushing his bicycle through floodwaters near the Superdome in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, taken by AP photographer Eric Gay, is projected Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2025, onto the same spot in New Orleans. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

This photo of Leonard Thomas, 23, crying in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, taken by AP photographer Rick Bowmer, is projected Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2025, onto the flood wall in the Lower Ninth Ward, which was breached, flooding major parts of the city. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

MADRID (AP) — Venezuelans living in Spain are watching the events unfold back home with a mix of awe, joy and fear.

Some 600,000 Venezuelans live in Spain, home to the largest population anywhere outside the Americas. Many fled political persecution and violence but also the country’s collapsing economy.

A majority live in the capital, Madrid, working in hospitals, restaurants, cafes, nursing homes and elsewhere. While some Venezuelan migrants have established deep roots and lives in the Iberian nation, others have just arrived.

Here is what three of them had to say about the future of Venezuela since U.S. forces deposed Nicolás Maduro.

David Vallenilla woke up to text messages from a cousin on Jan. 3 informing him “that they invaded Venezuela.” The 65-year-old from Caracas lives alone in a tidy apartment in the south of Madrid with two Daschunds and a handful of birds. He was in disbelief.

“In that moment, I wanted certainty,” Vallenilla said, “certainty about what they were telling me.”

In June 2017, Vallenilla’s son, a 22-year-old nursing student in Caracas named David José, was shot point-blank by a Venezuelan soldier after taking part in a protest near a military air base in the capital. He later died from his injuries. Video footage of the incident was widely publicized, turning his son’s death into an emblematic case of the Maduro government’s repression against protesters that year.

After demanding answers for his son’s death, Vallenilla, too, started receiving threats and decided two years later to move to Spain with the help of a nongovernmental organization.

On the day of Maduro’s capture, Vallenilla said his phone was flooded with messages about his son.

“Many told me, ‘Now David will be resting in peace. David must be happy in heaven,’” he said. “But don't think it was easy: I spent the whole day crying.”

Vallenilla is watching the events in Venezuela unfold with skepticism but also hope. He fears more violence, but says he has hope the Trump administration can effect the change that Venezuelans like his son tried to obtain through elections, popular protests and international institutions.

“Nothing will bring back my son. But the fact that some justice has begun to be served for those responsible helps me see a light at the end of the tunnel. Besides, I also hope for a free Venezuela.”

Journalist Carleth Morales first came to Madrid a quarter-century ago when Hugo Chávez was reelected as Venezuela's president in 2000 under a new constitution.

The 54-year-old wanted to study and return home, taking a break of sorts in Madrid as she sensed a political and economic environment that was growing more and more challenging.

“I left with the intention of getting more qualified, of studying, and of returning because I understood that the country was going through a process of adaptation between what we had known before and, well, Chávez and his new policies," Morales said. "But I had no idea that we were going to reach the point we did.”

In 2015, Morales founded an organization of Venezuelan journalists in Spain, which today has hundreds of members.

The morning U.S. forces captured Maduro, Morales said she woke up to a barrage of missed calls from friends and family in Venezuela.

“Of course, we hope to recover a democratic country, a free country, a country where human rights are respected,” Morales said. “But it’s difficult to think that as a Venezuelan when we’ve lived through so many things and suffered so much.”

Morales sees it as unlikely that she would return home, having spent more than two decades in Spain, but she said she hopes her daughters can one day view Venezuela as a viable option.

“I once heard a colleague say, ‘I work for Venezuela so that my children will see it as a life opportunity.’ And I adopted that phrase as my own. So perhaps in a few years it won’t be me who enjoys a democratic Venezuela, but my daughters.”

For two weeks, Verónica Noya has waited for her phone to ring with the news that her husband and brother have been freed.

Noya’s husband, Venezuelan army Capt. Antonio Sequea, was imprisoned in 2020 after having taken part in a military incursion to oust Maduro. She said he remains in solitary confinement in the El Rodeo prison in Caracas. For 20 months, Noya has been unable to communicate with him or her brother, who was also arrested for taking part in the same plot.

“That’s when my nightmare began,” Noya said.

Venezuelan authorities have said hundreds of political prisoners have been released since Maduro's capture, while rights groups have said the real number is a fraction of that. Noya has waited in agony to hear anything about her four relatives, including her husband's mother, who remain imprisoned.

Meanwhile, she has struggled with what to tell her children when they ask about their father's whereabouts. They left Venezuela scrambling and decided to come to Spain because family roots in the country meant that Noya already had a Spanish passport.

Still, she hopes to return to her country.

“I’m Venezuelan above all else,” Noya said. “And I dream of seeing a newly democratic country."

Venezuelan journalist Caleth Morales works in her apartment's kitchen in Madrid, Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)

David Vallenilla, father of the late David José Vallenilla Luis, sits in his apartment's kitchen in Madrid, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)

Veronica Noya holds a picture of her husband Antonio Sequea in Madrid, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)

David Vallenilla holds a picture of deposed President Nicolas Maduro, blindfolded and handcuffed, during an interview with The Associated Press at his home in Madrid, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)

Pictures of the late David José Vallenilla Luis are placed in the living room of his father, David José Vallenilla, in Madrid, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)