At a New Orleans mock funeral held to mark the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, one resident reportedly commented, “Thank God you are gone but unfortunately you will never be forgotten.” A similar sense of paradox – between remembrance and the desire to omit – is inscribed in Richard Misrach’s latest publication, Destroy this Memory. The book is a collection of photographs depicting graffiti penned in the aftermath of the United States’ most expensive natural disaster, in which over 1800 people died and more than 80 billion dollars’ worth of damage was caused to property. “It seems people have already forgotten about Hurricane Katrina, and those who endured it,” wrote Misrach recently; hence this timely aide-memoire.

Untitled (New Orleans and the Gulf Coast) 2005 © Richard Misrach / Aperture Foundation

“HELP! HELP!“ is sprayed on the façade of two semi-detached properties; a boarded-up window is the only other indicator of something amiss. The writing is modest-sized and appears underneath the ground floor windows – to be read by passers-by in the street. Things were to get much worse. Elsewhere, for example, “HELP” appears daubed in huge white letters on the collapsing roof of a bungalow. Pilots, not pedestrians, were its intended audience. “FUCK” appears on the wall of one trashed home, and again, higher up – under the eaves now, as the waters rise – FUCK.

Untitled (New Orleans and the Gulf Coast) 2005 © Richard Misrach / Aperture Foundation

The size, scale and sheer wantonness of much of the New Orleans graffiti enabled Misrach to compose photographs that include more contextual detail than might usually be expected. (Brassai’s Graffiti, or Lee Friedlander’s Letters From the People, for instance, are in the main – necessarily – more tightly cropped). “I WILL SHOOT TO KILL” reads a sign pictured amidst a landscape of felled trees, twisted branches, breezeblocks and broken piping. Only a garden umbrella – still standing – alludes to a previous domesticity. Another notice propped in a scene of devastation and detritus declares “FAMILY HOME $200K CLASSIC JAGUAR $5K INSURANCE WON’T PAY – WORTHLESS“.

Untitled (New Orleans and the Gulf Coast) 2005 © Richard Misrach / Aperture Foundation

Though Misrach is widely known for the high production values of his large scale, large format photography, the work here (80 or so frames edited from nearly three thousand) was shot on a four megapixel camera while he toured the area immediately after the disaster. From the graffiti, a range of different voices emerge. As might be expected, despair and anger are evident, but there is resilience and fortitude too: “KEEP THE FAITH. WE WILL REBUILD“, and “HEY KATRINA!! THAT’S ALL YOU GOT?”. Others are politicised: “I WILL REBUILD THIS HOUSE AND THEN VOTE OUT CORRUPT – LAZY POLITICIANS!!!” or bluntly “RESIGN BUSH!!!!“. Elsewhere there are moments of darkly comic humour: “DON’T TRY. I AM SLEEPING INSIDE WITH A BIG DOG, AN UGLY WOMAN, TWO SHOTGUNS AND A CLAW HAMMER“, and “I DIED HERE WAITING FOR AN AJUSTER” (sic).

Untitled (New Orleans and the Gulf Coast) 2005 © Richard Misrach / Aperture Foundation

And alongside the writings of the dispossessed are the ‘Katrina crosses’ – the quasi-official, arcane inscriptions left by search and rescue teams. In each sector of a cross a notation indicates when the property was searched and if it was entered, by whom, and the number of bodies found. In the years after the hurricane the majority were painted over, demolished or simply left to weather. Pace Misrach’s act of thoughtful and sensitive commemoration, they were, it seems, memories to be destroyed.

Destroy This Memory
by Richard Misrach
Published by Aperture, 2010
www.aperture.org
Hardcover, 140pp
$65