Hollowed-out homes. Cars entombed by mud. Unpeopled roads. Belongings reduced to dirt and debris.
It all took a toll on Taylor Schenker.
After Hurricane Helene last September, Schenker was upset by the deluge of images of Asheville, North Carolina. “This storm has taken so much,” she said, “and it’s so jarring to see the photos of the horrible devastation.” So less than a week after the storm, she set out to do something about the wide-scale loss.
While helping a friend search for belongings cast downriver, she stumbled on a handful of photos of strangers — mud-caked, curled up in tree branches and stuck under river rocks. The images captured family reunions, newborn babies, weddings, birthday parties, beloved pets and school portraits.
“These tiny photos had been through so much and miraculously had washed up and were in decent enough condition that you could see what they were,” said Schenker, 27. “It stuck with me.”
To reclaim the search phrase “photos from Helene,” she created an Instagram for “something positive, which is reuniting people with their memories.” She set up a post-office box, linked up with a volunteer search and rescue crew, and ultimately uncovered more than 500 photos — or what she calls “little needles in a haystack.”
When Schenker made her first match, she got chills.
Then, sitting in her car, she cried.
Something fragile, re-emerging from the muck
We hold onto photos to keep memories alive — of people, places and moments that might otherwise fade. Or sometimes are ripped away abruptly.
Schenker has since returned more than 70 such images. A stack of them were hand-delivered to Mary Moss, whose car was destroyed by an uprooted tree as she and her husband evacuated the Asheville home where they had lived for almost 40 years.
“It was really kind of overwhelming at first when she handed me those pictures. I just couldn’t even speak,” Moss said. “You don’t expect something as fragile as photos to be retrieved.”
Months later, they’ve received some FEMA assistance and found a temporary home, which they’re gradually furnishing with church donations. But some things are irreplaceable.
“This is not really about losing the home and all the material stuff in there. But what’s been devastating is that that was everything we had of Tommy,” she said, of their son who died at age 12 from a genetic disorder. “It’s those memories and the little things, the photos, that you can’t replace.”
As Schenker later understood it, “When they lost their home, they lost virtually all proof that this child existed.”
“It is such a privilege to look into the intimate moments of people’s lives,” she said. “They’ve literally lost everything and they can’t ever recreate those childhood photos.”
In photos Schenker found nearly 3 miles (5 km) from the Moss’ family home, Tommy is seen as a 2-year-old, dressed like an angel for a Christmas pageant. In another, he is wearing a toddler-sized suit; in yet another, he’s playing at daycare alongside his younger brother Dallas.
“It is just breathtaking,” Moss said. “This is one thing that the river didn’t get to take — or didn’t get to keep.”
Lost images emerged from the California fires, too
More than 2,000 miles (3,200 km) away, in the Altadena foothills of Los Angeles, Claire Schwartz, 31, began to collect photos with a similar idea: Find images, post them online, try to unite them with their owners.
After the Eaton fire, but before the first rain, she panicked. When rain and ash mix, it makes lye, which destroys photos. “Someone has to do this ASAP,” she remembers thinking to herself. “And I realized it had to be me — because nobody else was doing it.”
Luca Ackerman, a New York-based photo conservator, cautions that mold can start to develop 48 hours after water exposure. To slow the deterioration process, he freezes such prints — and advised to not wipe off any surfaces, which can drag toxic oils across the print, “driving particles deeper into the material.” Some photos are so brittle, too, that when touched they may disintegrate.
In the wake of disasters, conservators like Ackerman are deployed in volunteer rotations with the National Heritage Responders. Rapidly, he trains art handlers and museum staff how to treat sensitive materials, whether they are damaged by smoke, water, ash or soot.
Wearing a respirator, nitrile gloves and booties, Schwartz swiftly set out to salvage photos — finding them alongside pages from yearbooks, sheet music, and children’s art in nearby parks, neighbors’ front yards and a golf course.
“The wind has scattered everything, everywhere. And trash is mixed in with precious mementos, everywhere you look,” she said. “It’s just absolutely bizarre how stuff clumps together and travels as a unit.”
Finding the people behind wayward photographs
Normally, a local library would take in found items, but the Altadena Public Library, along with more than 9,000 homes, burned to the ground. Librarians are redirecting residents who have found photos to Schwartz.
She adopted parts of her process from what she learned as an archival intern at the Corita Art Center — protecting photos in acid-free, glassine envelopes and storing them in a waterproof box in a temperature-controlled room with good air circulation.
Last week, she made her first match: disposable camera photos of teenagers, smiling, in prom dresses and glittering tiaras. The image is flecked with damage, but all four corners are intact.
“It’s funny — you formulate these ideas of who the person is,” Schwartz said. “She was kind of exactly what I pictured, just really friendly and bubbly and lovely — you could tell that just from her photos.”
Schwartz’s house survived because her neighbors stayed behind to fight the fire themselves, but the landscape around it — full of burned-out lots, ghostly palm trees and blackened telephone poles — is otherworldly and changed. “It looks like the moon. It looks like another planet. It doesn’t look like home.”
Nearby is Joshua Simpson, a photographer who lost his Altadena home and studio, along with decades of film negatives, silver gelatin prints and camera equipment. But something meaningful survived.
“The very first thing we found was this beautiful vintage print of my mother-in-law holding my wife when she was a newborn baby.” The black-and-white photo carries an extra layer of poignancy, as his mother-in-law died just few months ago. “We were both pretty overjoyed in that moment. It felt a little magical finding that one.”
Above all else, Ackerman said, personal safety comes first. “When you’re picking up people’s heirlooms or family photographs, that can be traumatic — even if they’re not yours,” he said.
When people survive catastrophic events such as wildfires or hurricanes, and then are left to cope with loss, they may express a wide range of emotions — from overwhelmed to outraged to numb, sometimes all at once. Tragedies, though, can also strengthen the ties in communities, and people like Schenker and Schwartz are Exhibits A and B.
“Disasters like this really bring out the best in people,” Moss said. “You know, I can laugh or I can cry about it — and I choose to laugh about it. Fortunately, we didn’t lose the most important thing. That’s lives.”
