Stan Strembicki: the Lost Library July 19, 2007

Since 1982, Stan Strembicki has visited New Orleans two or three times a year and photographed the city. In November 2005, he began focusing on objects in the debris field following Hurricane Katrina, particularly storm-lost photo albums, wedding albums and snapshots. At that time, he found the library of Alfred Lawless High School. The school, located in the Lower 9th Ward, had filled with flood water and one of its library walls had burst, scattering books across an adjacent field. Over the course of a year, Strembicki photographed the books as they began to dissolve into the landscape, symbolic to him of lost knowledge, traditions lost and history lost. His exhibition at Joslyn will feature photographs of the books.