E-mail updates
Follow on Twitter
Subscribe to RSSThis brings to mind the (hopefully) rhetorical question, "If your house caught fire and you had time to save one non-living thing, what would you take with you?" Maybe it's because I'm a photographer, but I remember even in school knowing that, given a chance, I would try to save my family photos. It's encouraging to think that maybe a few people in Japan will have that chance thanks to these volunteers.
Toru Hanai / Reuters
A volunteer cleans a family photo that was washed by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami as baby photos are placed to dry at a volunteer centre in Ofunato, Iwate prefecture, April 12, 2011.
You can see David Arnott's post on the beginning of this photo recovery effort here and Meredith Birkett's post from last month on the images left in the wake of the tsunami.
Toru Hanai / Reuters
A volunteer opens family photos that were washed away by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami before cleaning at a volunteer centre in Ofunato, Iwate prefecture, April 12, 2011.
Leave a Comment:
Can you imagine having your home destroyed by a tsunami, everything lost? And then someone finds pictures and takes the care and the time to clean them so, someday, you may have them again? What an amazing thing to do. Thank you, photo cleaners!!
It was great to see that the search and rescue workers were pulling photos and photo albums from the wreckage. Of all the things of value they saw in those destroyed homes, the one thing they felt was worth retrieving more than anything else were the families memories. This speaks very well of the Japanese people and the volunteers that went over to help out. It shows that as a society they know what is most valuable.
How awesome is that
You just hope that there are surviving family members to claim and cherish these photos. What a wonderful group of people doing this cleanup - somehow, helping these people. The whole situation is so tragic and more bad news keeps coming - more after shocks and the upgrade on the nuclear situation. It is amazing how resilient these people are - I wish it was easier to help them.
I encourage those wonderful people who are cleaning those photos. Remember to contact all the photo finishing labs that serviced the area and have them permanently save all the digital images that were ever processed through their equiptment. There are volumes of treasures in their database that they usually destroy within months. Such data is most likely stored in another region. What I am asking is that no one destroy image data anywhere in Japan. It is gold for future generations. In the US I asked that Kodak do the same for the devistation of New Orleans, but I never hear back. So here I am, pleading that Japan do the right thing.
We, humans, can be awesome. It's not that hard.
What a wonderful gift this is. It makes you heart smile during this very difficult time Japan is facing.