Hurricane hieroglyphics

By Bethany Bray
Staff Writer

May 08, 2008 05:00 am

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In February 2007, North Andover resident Goodloe Suttler traveled to Louisiana, capturing the desolation and desertion of post-Katrina New Orleans through his camera lens. Now, one year later — and nearly three years after Hurricane Katrina made landfall on Aug. 29, 2005 — Suttler is showcasing some of his photographs from the trip in a local gallery.

"It was the largest natural disaster and civil engineering disaster in the history of the United States, and now it's out of the news cycle. ... My purpose is to provide a visual reminder of the heartache that happened," Suttler said. "I'm trying to make the point that it was the death of relationships, (of) neighborhoods that had lived there for generations."

Forty-five of the 1,600 images Suttler took in New Orleans will be displayed in the Beland Gallery at the Essex Art Center in Lawrence from May 9 to June 20.

Suttler and his wife, Diane Heerema, went to New Orleans as chaperones for a group of 25 teenage volunteers from their church, North Parish Unitarian Universalist in North Andover. The students and chaperones spent the week working around the city, cleaning debris from homes and yards and helping folks tear out dry wall and gut their houses down to the studs so that construction could begin.

Suttler was the trip's documentarian, traveling between work sites and photographing the North Parish teens at work, as well as groups from several other Unitarian Universalist churches.

It was in driving through New Orleans' deserted streets and neighborhoods that Suttler was inspired to shoot the collection of 45 images chosen for the Essex Art Center show, he said.

Suttler's images are of the markings made by rescue workers as they combed the city for bodies two, three and four weeks after Katrina hit. As each house was searched, rescue workers would make an X-like symbol with spray paint on the house's front door or entryway. Markings filled in the X to signify the date the house was searched, which National Guard unit completed the search, how many bodies were found and any notes or warnings for future rescue parties.

The markings stood out to Suttler, he said, and he decided to capture them with his camera.

"They are like Passover symbols," he said. "I tried to hone in on the pieces of houses, because what I was after was isolating just the X, which I viewed as a story. Each told a different story."

"I wanted to document what I saw 18 months after Katrina. Basically the scars on houses that were really prominent."

Suttler's photographs will be mounted like they're in a mausoleum, he said, on black foam core to remind viewers "of the death of the city (New Orleans)," he said.

"Every house had them (the rescue markings). Katrina didn't discriminate by economics. Any one of these doesn't say much, but the collection of them really does," he said of the symbols. "Everybody was affected; it didn't matter where you lived."

What struck Suttler and the group of volunteers was how empty and deserted New Orleans was, 18 months after the hurricane struck. Most neighborhoods had just one house that was occupied.

"It was spooky. House after house, you'd walk by and there was just nobody there," Suttler said. "Very odd."

The population of New Orleans before Katrina was estimated at 430,000; when Suttler visited in 2007, only 200,000 people had stayed or returned, he said.

"There is a lot of debate if the population will ever make it back up," he said. "It's going to take a long time."

He hopes to return to New Orleans some day, this time to volunteer in the city's public schools.

Suttler retired from his job as a senior manager at Analog Devices in Norwood in 2000, after working there since 1976. Photography is just a hobby, he said. It's something he enjoys, but would never want to use as a way to earn money.

The proceeds from any prints sold at his show this month will go back to the nonprofit Essex Art Center, he said.

Suttler first picked up a camera in ninth grade and worked on the school yearbook and newspaper in high school and college. He would take black and white portraits of neighborhood kids and families to save a little money for college, he said.

In 1976 he entered the corporate world and didn't pick up a camera until he retired in 2000. Since then, he's been shooting seriously for about five years, he said.

Part of the process of getting back into photography included a switch to digital cameras from traditional film. He did a lot of research about digital photography before he switched, and waited for technology to advance to the equivalent and quality of a film camera, he said. New Orleans was his first digital shoot.

He's had one exhibit of photographs at the Essex Art Center and is working on putting together books of images (not for selling, but as archives) on various subjects — including his New Orleans photographs, but also national parks, the Jersey Shore, urban decay and other subjects.

"I'm just an amateur. I fall into the category of advanced amateur. I use professional equipment, but donate my prints, I don't ever sell them. I made a conscious decision not to be a professional photographer in high school. They have a tough life," Suttler said. "I shoot what interests me at the moment. I'd say it's halfway between fine art photography and photojournalism."

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IF YOU GO:

r "Symbols of Search: Color photographs of New Orleans homes' details 18 months after Hurricane Katrina"

r Photography exhibit of images by North Andover resident Goodloe Suttler

r Running May 9 to June 20; opening reception Friday, May 9, 5 to 7 p.m.

r Elizabeth A. Beland Gallery, Essex Art Center, 56 Island St., Lawrence

r Visit www.essexartcenter.com for more information, or call 978-685-2343

Artist's statement

An excerpt from Goodloe Suttler's artist statement about "Symbols of Search: Color photographs of New Orleans homes' details 18 months after Hurricane Katrina":

"Most of New Orleans' neighborhoods are 10 to 20 feet below the water level of Lake Pontchartrain to the north and the Mississippi River to the south. The protective levees that breeched in 53 locations took many days to repair with temporary sand bags, during which 80 percent of New Orleans stewed in toxic flood water. Search-and-rescue teams could not begin a systematic, house-to-house search for trapped survivors or dead bodies until the levees began to work again, allowing flood waters to be pumped out of residential areas. Two weeks after Katrina, the search teams started to enter houses.

"No centralized database for coordinating search and rescue activities was possible in the midst of the chaos created by the flooding. Improvising, search teams spray-painted a large and visible "X" on each house they examined, to communicate with other search teams that the house had been searched and to indicate what they had found. ... As the photographs in this exhibit show, these symbols were not consistently applied by the search teams.

"Eighteen months after Katrina hit the region, I spent a week photographically recording the house-gutting and yard clean-up work rendered by several groups of Massachusetts high school students during their spring break. Each day the work sites assigned to the students changed. As I drove between the various sites, I kept noticing the large X spray-painted on each house by the search teams. Many times each day I would stop my car to photograph those symbols that both told me a story and were graphically interesting. Some symbols looked like they were still dripping blood, some were as surreal as their abandoned streets, some seemed oddly serene, and some looked like resident ghosts had been scratching at them for a while."

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