photos and sandy. the recovery process

Post disaster recovery of damaged art,  especially photographs, is not easy . this interview lays out the problems  and offers at least one quick suggestion for photography collections . Photographers need to read this too  


Hurricane Sandy caused flooding of gallery storage areas in New York and elsewhere earlier this week. Paul Messier, a Boston-based expert on the conservation of photographs and works on paper, has worked as a consultant to the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, and other institutions. He also assisted museums and historical societies in the Gulf Coast area with restoration efforts after Hurricane Katrina..




PDN: Can you describe the process for saving a water damaged photographic print?

PM: The ideal scenario is to remove the material from any framing or matting that might be expendable that also might be wet. If the object can be allowed to air dry in dry, circulating air, then that has the best chance for a 100 percent recover.

Realistically, when you are dealing with large number of objects–many of these galleries have photography as well as other works of art on paper–you may not have time or space to do single item recovery. You may have to act on many objects at one time. The best technique in that situation is to move things into freezer storage. That buys you a lot of time. You can go back [later] and remove objects one by one and give them the attention they need to bring them to a dry state safely.

Not every gallery has a disaster plan, and not every gallery has the expertise to get it together in a short period of time. Time is really the enemy. The more time goes by, the greater the chance that material will not be recoverable in any way. Especially in terms of its functioning as work of art. If the work is purely archival, and valued only as information, then a lot of these techniques are effective.


http://pdnpulse.com/2012/11/can-flood-damaged-prints-be-saved.html