Art conservator to aid Katrina victims

Mississippi archivists are drawing on the photo restoration expertise of Prof. Debra Hess Norris to preserve photos scattered and torn by Hurricane Katrina.

2:43 p.m., Sept. 22, 2005--Debra Hess Norris, who visited Mississippi’s hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast with a group of archivists earlier this week, said the damage there is so severe that the landscape consists of little more than the Gulf of Mexico and piles of rubble.

Four weeks after the storm hit, there was still no running water, electricity was out, families were separated, buildings were in tatters and precious photographs and family treasures were soaked and scattered.

It was her expertise in photo restoration that Mississippi archivists were seeking when they asked for help from Norris, UD’s Henry Francis du Pont Chair in Fine Arts and Chair of the Department of Art Conservation. Together, they drove three hours over much-trafficked roads and damaged bridges to assess records and archival photographs in the coastal towns.

This visit was organized by the Society of American Archivists and other professional organizations.

“In some cases, the buildings are gone and the records no longer exist. The magnitude of the devastation is staggering,’’ Norris said. “It’s not one area. It’s the entire coast.”

Railroad tracks were gnarled. Porches were shorn from homes. Furniture was mangled. School pictures were soaked and blemished with mud.

One of thousands of Gulf Coast homes left in ruins in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

“The power of the water really moved things around and created indescribable damage,’’ Norris said. She said she was moved by the Mississippi archival staffers’ tireless attempts to save historical records despite their own family tragedies and by the volunteers from other states who packed the airport en route to work as rescue personnel, firefighters, archivists and medical staff.

In some places, historic documents had already been washed and frozen in tractor-trailers. In others, records had disintegrated.

In Waveland, Miss., a devastated town of 6,674 on the Gulf Coast, Norris saw photos and family keepsakes washed into random debris piles dotting the landscape around leveled buildings.

She said hurricane victims are looking for anything they can find that is a reminder of their life as it was--photos, records and trophies. Meanwhile, cultural institutions are attempting to save historical records from damaged and collapsed archives.

Norris said many homeowners had returned to place American flags on their collapsed houses, leave instructions for Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) workers or leave notes for neighbors, such as, “We’re all OK.”

Prof. Debra Hess Norris (seated) teaches students in her art conservation class techniques for preserving historic photos.

“It’s a cliché,’’ Norris said, “but, boy, it really puts your life into perspective. Seeing the damage and the devastation was really upsetting. You just want to break into tears.”

Norris said faculty and graduate student conservators from UD would be working with Gulf Coast conservators to restore items onsite in the devastated communities and in the laboratories at UD and at Winterthur Museum.

“Your hope as a conservator is that you can use your knowledge and skills to help,’’ Norris said.

Norris is chairperson of the board of Heritage Preservation, a national advocacy group, which has posted information on how to save waterlogged or damaged family photographs on a special site at [www.heritagepreservation.org/PROGRAMS/TFHurricaneRes.HTM]. For more information on the recovery work, visit [www.archivists.org] and [www.coshrc.org].

Article by Kathy Canavan
Photos courtesy of Debra Hess Norris
Classroom photo by Kathy F. Atkinson

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