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A global network of volunteers from Operation Photo Rescue will offer free photograph restoration to flood victims April 25-26 at the Winona County Historical Society, 160 Johnson St.
Volunteers take a digital image of a flood-damaged photograph and download it to a global photo bank, said Christine Pentecost, Operation Photo Rescue president.
Project volunteers, including photojournalists, digital photographers, graphic designers and image restoration artists, will use software imaging and design programs to restore the photographs, she said.
Volunteers reload the new photographs back into the bank, and the project prints and mails the pictures to the owners for free, Pentecost said.
She estimated a minimum of six months before restored photographs can be returned.
Participating individuals can dry and place photographs in a plastic baggie to bring them in, but Pentecost warned not to clean photographs at home.
Because of the high volume of photographs needed to be process, Operation Photo Rescue asks individuals to bring 20 photographs or less per household.
Jeremiah Shimshak, graphic designer and Web master for the Winona Post who’s helping with the two-day event, helped restore photographs for Operation Photo Rescue after Hurricane Katrina.
“When the flood hit here, I remembered that,” Shimshak said. “That’s a big thing, preserving the memories.”
Many of the people Shimshak talked with after last August’s flood told him about their damaged photo albums and not knowing what to do.
That’s how Free Lance-Star newspaper photojournalists Dave Ellis and Rebecca Sell in Fredericksburg, Va., formed Operation Photo Rescue while covering the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
“Becky saw a woman picking up wedding photos and was going to throw them away,” Pentecost said.
Operation Photo Rescue has since helped victims of disasters in the Gulf Coast, the California forest fires and Coffeyville, Kan., where an oil spill and flood hit last summer, she said.
Pentecost remembered a Biloxi, Miss., woman bringing in a plastic coat box filled with photos, and the overwhelming odor of mold festering inside.
“We were all sneezing and our eyes watering,” Pentecost said. “Some of these photos take hours upon hours to restore.”
Pentecost can relate to a photograph’s importance to an individual and a community’s shared history.
Last September, the Bozeman, Mont., resident returned to her hometown of Gays Mills, Wis., to help restore photographs.
The devastation Pentecost finds elsewhere on the job was what she saw along Gays Mills’ main drag.
“It’s an old little town,” she said. “It’s not much of a town anymore.”
Sometimes, Pentecost said a photograph is all what’s left to remember things by.
Contact reporter Amber Dulek at amber.dulek@lee.net or 507-453-3513.
