鈥淒4X9705: Lower Ninth Ward, Memory Loss,鈥� by Stan Strembicki (2006)
Twenty years ago, in August 2005, Hurricane Katrina arrived in New Orleans.
Photographer Stan Strembicki 鈥�75, who has a long relationship with the city, arrived shortly after the storm to document the catastrophe, focusing on the hard-hit Lower Ninth Ward. 鈥淎s an artist,鈥� he says, 鈥淚 felt compelled to do something, anything. Where do you start when faced with an over-whelming event like Katrina鈥攁 city emptied and ruined?鈥�
Strembicki began looking for 鈥渟ymbols of loss, [gravitating] to found photo albums, wedding albums, snapshots. These were something everyone had and understood. I brought along a 60 millimeter macro lens and made photographs of the objects I found, taking nothing with me but images.鈥�
The resulting images of water-damaged photos became an ongoing project, 鈥淢emory Loss,鈥� and can be seen in the recently released docuseries on Netflix, Katrina: Come Hell and High Water, in an episode directed by Spike Lee.
An emeritus professor of art at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo., Strembicki has exhibited his work internationally and has work in the permanent collections of museums in the Midwest and southern U.S.