Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Spring 2008 - (Page 68) B ack in October 2005, barely a month after levee breaches following Hurricane Katrina destroyed much of New Orleans, Donn Young organized, quite possibly, the most important art show of his 35-year career. On a dusty countertop in a rented warehouse in Jefferson Parish, he laid out several dozen black and white photos for one man to view. Before the flood, Young considered the prints rejects. They were lying on a cluttered work bench in his Lakeview studio when the storm hit. He figures they floated. Some were unscathed, but most had surreal distortions. The silver emulsion bled, creating swirls of black and grey and white. Finger prints along the edges, from being handled while wet, gave them a ghostly feel. The prints were a teaser, an attempt to give Mark Martin, a curator at Louisiana State University, an appreciation for the breadth of art soaking in nearly 100 tubs housed in the warehouse. Mardi Gras Indian Chiefs and American presidents, second-line parades, jazz funerals and now-dead jazz icons bubbled and frothed in the same foul sludge that had blanketed 80 percent of the city for weeks. Young’s life’s work soaked in those tubs, and in order to save even a small percentage, he desperately needed help. Not only were the negatives, the slides and the prints disintegrating before Young’s eyes, his post-Katrina landlord had called to say the neighbors were complaining about the smell. He had two days to move the tubs; otherwise they would be put out for Monday’s trash. “We didn’t have anyone to move it or any place to move it to,” he said. “I had run out of favors.” Neither Young nor his long-time friend Pam Cousté knew anyone at LSU when she called the Special Collections Department at Hill Memorial Library. She said they only knew that they needed “deep pockets and a staff willing to save this stuff.” Mark Martin answered the phone. Through her frantic sobs, Cousté begged Martin to save her friend’s work. The day after Martin spoke with Cousté, he showed up at the warehouse. After viewing Young’s salvaged prints, he drove back to Baton Rouge, picked up his co-worker Elaine Smyth and brought a bottle of wine to their boss’s house. If they were going to save Young’s photographs, they knew it would take convincing their boss. It wasn’t that Faye Phillips, the associate dean of Libraries for Special Collections at LSU, didn’t believe Young’s work was valuable. She simply didn’t believe it could be saved. But the night before Martin and Smyth showed up, Phillips had a 68 LOUISIANA ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES\Spring 2008 Donn Young (left) salvages slides and prints from his inundated studio (above) in New Orleans’ Lakeview neighborhood. dream she was in New Orleans rescuing stray dogs. “Well, we went to New Orleans,” she said. “But we didn’t rescue stray dogs.” LSU has since deemed Young’s work “historically significant.” And over the past two years, Martin, Phillips and Smyth, along with about a dozen graduate students, have worked to salvage the 1.5 million photos that once comprised Young’s archive. Of the 110 cubic feet of negatives, slides and prints the archivists hauled to LSU from the warehouse, sadly, only a small percentage survived. A mere 5 cubic feet was saved. Reducing 1.5 million images to 5 cubic feet “would be the same as if 100,000 homes burned to the ground, and one family photo from one of those homes was saved,” Martin said, trying to illustrate the scope of the loss. “That’s how much of Donn’s work that was lost.” In the two-plus years since levee breaches destroyed so much for so many, Young continues to work as a photographer, documenting the city as it struggles to recover, all the while struggling to recover himself. “You survive the loss of 1.5 million images by someone saying your work is historically significant, and we’re going to try to save it,” he said. “Whether they’re successful or not, it doesn’t really matter. It’s about the recognition because that’s all I have left.” The university has also set up a Web site showcasing some of the salvaged images. It can be accessed at http://louisdl.louislibraries.org/cdm4/browse.php?CISOROOT=/LSU_DYP. — Ariane Wiltse ARIANE WILTSE http://louisdl.louislibraries.org/cdm4/browse.php?CISOROOT=/LSU_DYP
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