When we experience a flood, so many of our personal items are damaged. The whole experience can be quite overwhelming. Keep in mind that even though many of our “things” can be replaced, our photographs can be severely damaged by water, mud, etc. and not so easily replaced.
If your have water damaged photographs, I encourage you to deal with the damage as soon as possible. Especially if you have a stack of photographs that are all wet, you must take action quickly. If you let them dry, the process of separating the images can be quite tedious and permanent damage is much more likely.
How you deal with water damaged photographs depends on how the print was made. If the photograph was made using the traditional photographic process, it was originally developed in water-based chemicals and you can use water to rinse and clean and possibly separate the photographs. If the photograph was printed by inkjet or other type of computer printer, the paper used may be damaged by water way more quickly, so especially be careful.
If you are unsure whether rinsing with water might damage the print further. Try putting a little water on just one of the prints and test it first.
The first step is to carefully try to remove as much dirt as possible. Then use care to gently flow water over the prints to clean them. What type of water should you use? Some folks say tap water. Others say you should use distilled water. Either way, it is safer if you use cool water (not hot water).
Use extreme care to not damage the emulsion on the prints. If it is stack of photographic prints stuck together, you can soak them and then attempt to ever-so-gently peel them apart, starting with the photo on top. Once the photographs are rinsed, cleaned, and separated, then lay them out to air dry separately. Having air flowing over the top and bottom is best. (Idea: you could use a non-metal window screen to lay them on).
This is such a tedious process. Use caution, and before you try to do this yourself, I would highly recommend you read some of these great articles posted on the web by these authorities on the subject:
- A Consumer Guide for the Recovery of Water-Damaged Traditional and Digital Prints
by the Image Permanence Institute - Recommendations for cleaning and restoring damaged photos and albums
by FujiFilm Corporation
I do photograph restoration as part of my business, by creating a digital master copy of the damaged photograph and then use software to “repair” the damage and make a new print. Digital repair may be the only option to really fix the photograph once it has been damaged. Before you resort to this, though, at least take every effort to deal with the water damaged photographs as soon as possible so you can minimize the long term damage.
Our photographs mean so much to us. When our homes are flooded, we can sometimes repair the home, or buy new furniture, but we can’t buy new photographs.
If your home was flooded, I hope your photographs survived!
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