Manuel Maria Villapecellín’s house in Torrent, a suburb of Valencia, Spain, was hit by the deadly flash floods that killed hundreds of people and destroyed coastal villages in October.
”I had my hi-fi system, all my library and everything. All my vinyl records, a very big collection. Plastic. Gone,” he said.
Villapecellín managed to fish out his family’s waterlogged photo albums, and he hopes they can be saved. He brought them to a local museum that is a collection point for Salvem Les Fotos, or Let’s Save the Photos, a program out of two Valencia universities where experts are trying to save personal histories.
A family photo destroyed in the floods, which has been restored by Salvem Les Fotos in Valencia, Spain. Gerry Hadden/The World
“It’s the memories. I mean, I wasn’t [at] my parents’ wedding, so I know it because I’ve seen it in the photos. And how can I explain to my children who were my parents? They have never met them. So, it’s in the photos.”
During the floods, nearly a year’s worth of rain fell in a matter of hours. Even today, survivors are still cleaning up. Scientists say the floods were supercharged by climate change, a phenomenon that is only accelerating. And residents worry the waters will return.
Many victims have been receiving material donations from around Spain, from furniture to appliances. But survivors of tragedies like this often say they can’t replace the possessions that contain their memories — like photos. Since the floods, though, volunteer restoration experts have been trying to rescue family albums and portraits.
An image being restored by Salvem Les Fotos in Valencia, Spain, following the deadly floods that struck in October of last year.Gerry Hadden/The World
Salvem Les Fotos started its work as soon as the floodwaters receded.
Lucia Cerradas, a grad student in photography from the University of Valencia, did the intake for Villapecellín’s photos.
Days after the floods, she said, she jumped on her bike and rode through the worst-hit areas collecting photographs and spreading the word about Salvem Les Fotos’s makeshift photo lab.
Salvem Les Fotos started collecting people’s photos as soon as the floodwaters receded in Valencia, Spain.Gerry Hadden/The World
“It really hit me hard,” she said. “The families would take you in not just to hand over photos, but because they needed to talk about the trauma. To feel taken care of for a moment.”
Volunteers have collected hundreds of thousands of photos. Cerradas spends her days trying to clean and dry them all. But the biggest stockpile is at the nearby Valencia Polytechnical University.
The photos are stored in donated freezers, said lead researcher and photo restorer Esther Nesbot, explaining that the cold stops mold from advancing.
Dozens of volunteers with Salvem Les Fotos, or Let’s Save the Photos, got to work trying to rescue family photos in the immediate aftermath of the deadly flash floods that struck Valencia, Spain, in October of last year.Gerry Hadden/The World
Most of the photos that come in are in terrible shape, she said. Mold has blackened them. They’re caked together in muddy blocks, swollen and discolored by water. But if there’s something in the image to save — a fragment of a house, a kid’s first bike, a face — then Nesbot’s team is on it.
First, they painstakingly cut the photos from albums, removing plastic covers, recording their order of appearance to make a replacement album later.
To save the damaged photos, volunteers with Salvem Les Fotos, or Let’s Save the Photos, first painstakingly cut the photos from albums, removing plastic covers and recording their order of appearance to make a replacement album later. Gerry Hadden/The World
Then, they bathe the photos in distilled water and wipe them down with alcohol to kill any germs.
Once cleaned, the photos are dried on racks, rearranged in order onto new album pages and sealed until the owner comes to reclaim them.
Nesbot said that last week, a woman came by to pick up her recovered photos.
Once cleaned, the photos being restored by Salvem Les Fotos, or Let’s Save the Photos, in Valencia, Spain, are dried on racks, rearranged in order onto new album pages and sealed until the owner comes to reclaim them.Gerry Hadden/The World
She’d lost her husband under terrible circumstances. And all her kids have moved away. She broke down, she said, when she saw what had been saved.
It’s never the complete album, Nesbot said. A once-in-a-century flood like that does irreparable damage to something as delicate as a paper photograph. Often, they’re destroyed altogether.
Which is why technicians here scan the photos digitally before returning them. Everyone gets the paper versions back, and a pen drive.
A table of photos being recovered by Salvem Les Fotos, or Let’s Save the Photos, in Valencia, Spain.Gerry Hadden/The World
Volunteer Ana Carreras, a photography student at Polytechnical University of Valencia, said that she feels the weight of their work — sometimes, she said, she has to stop and cry.
“The photos I’m washing right now span an entire life,” which begins with the parents’ wedding, then, their children, and then, family vacations.
“You end up feeling like you’ve spent hours with these people,” she said, adding, “It’s just knowing that they’re going to get some small part of their memories back that keeps me going.”