Every time Nairobi Hilaire Seabrooks visited her grandmother’s home in Pacific Palisades, she would point to photos framed on the walls and around the home and ask her family for the stories behind each memory.
Last month, Hilaire Seabrooks’ grandmother and her husband learned of the devastating Palisades fire as they were shopping at a Costco. Their neighborhood had been evacuated, and they couldn’t return to grab anything.
While her grandmother’s home stayed standing in the treacherous days to come, it was heavily damaged by smoke and ash. Hilaire Seabrooks doesn’t yet know the state of her grandmother’s photo collection, but to help her family preserve their memories, she attended a free event Sunday at the Black Image Center, at 3209 La Cienega Ave. in Culver City, focused on helping people clean photos and other memories damaged by the Eaton and Palisades fires.
“I wanted to learn as much information as I could so that I could come with the tools that I needed,” Hilaire Seabrooks said.
The quarterly Black Family Archive event is often focused on digitizing and learning to safely store generations of photos and memories, so that Black community members can play an active role in preserving their history and making sure future generations can learn about the relatives who came before them.
The Black Image Center archiving event Sunday focused for the first time on helping community members learn how they can clean and preserve photos and other sentimental items damaged in the Eaton and Palisades fires that devastated Altadena, Pasadena, the Pacific Palisades and surrounding communities.
Ronel Namde laid out handfuls of gloves, N-95 masks and cosmetic and smoke cleaning sponges for anyone looking to clean their photographs, books and other heirlooms or mementos that may have been damaged in the fires.
Usually Namde, a conservationist who’s been volunteering for the Black Image Center for around a year and a half, connects with visitors and helps them find quality but cost-effective ways to care for and preserve collections of family photos and other memories as part of the center’s quarterly Black Family Archive event.
As residents affected by the fires return and start to dig through their homes, Namde said they should wear personal protective equipment, including face masks, gloves, eye protection and long-sleeved clothing, to shield themselves from toxic ash and soot.
Carefully wiping a cosmetic sponge across photos or books can help remove some soot or ash, and a soot sponge, which can be found at hardware stores, could be used for items that have been heavily damaged.
After cleaning, photos and other items still may smell like smoke. In that case, Namde recommends putting photos in a container along with a charcoal bag to remove the scent.
Madelyn Inez, a resident archivist at the Black Image Center, helps to scan and digitize family photos, so that loved ones can preserve their family histories, share them with more family members and print more copies. She hopes the center can provide a space for residents to clean photos damaged in the wildfires and digitize any photos, damaged or not, so that locals can preserve their legacy.
Inez said she also takes one-on-one appointments with anyone interested, where she can spend an hour or more digitizing and preserving as many photos as possible to help people have another copy of their family’s history.
Hilaire Seabrooks stopped by the event to pick up supplies and learn more about cleaning damaged memories after a major fire. Her grandmother is still living at a hotel in Hawthorne, but Hilaire Seabrooks hopes that, once she’s ready and able to return to her home, they’ll be able to clean the family photos that she cherishes.
One of her friends, she said, has no photos of himself growing up after they were lost in a previous house fire. Hilaire Seabrooks hopes that she can preserve her family’s photos and memories, so that their history can live on for future generations.
“It’s so important, especially when it comes to the Black community,” Hilaire Seabrooks said. “Stuff has been burnt down countless times over the course of history.”
For more information about Black Image Center events visit blackimagecenter.org