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Before March, 2011, I was a photographic retoucher

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based in New York City.

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We're pale, gray creatures.

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We hide in dark, windowless rooms,

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and generally avoid sunlight.

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We make skinny models skinnier, perfect skin more perfect,

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and the impossible possible,

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and we get criticized in the press all the time,

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but some of us are actually talented artists

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with years of experience

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and a real appreciation for images and photography.

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On March 11, 2011, I watched from home, as the rest

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of the world did, as the tragic events unfolded in Japan.

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Soon after, an organization I volunteer with,

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All Hands Volunteers, were on the ground, within days,

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working as part of the response efforts.

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I, along with hundreds of other volunteers,

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knew we couldn't just sit at home,

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so I decided to join them for three weeks.

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On May the 13th, I made my way to the town of Ōfunato.

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It's a small fishing town in Iwate Prefecture,

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about 50,000 people,

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one of the first that was hit by the wave.

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The waters here have been recorded at reaching

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over 24 meters in height,

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and traveled over two miles inland.

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As you can imagine, the town had been devastated.

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We pulled debris from canals and ditches.

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We cleaned schools. We de-mudded and gutted homes

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ready for renovation and rehabilitation.

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We cleared tons and tons of stinking, rotting fish carcasses

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from the local fish processing plant.

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We got dirty, and we loved it.

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For weeks, all the volunteers and locals alike

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had been finding similar things.

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They'd been finding photos and photo albums

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and cameras and SD cards.

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And everyone was doing the same.

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They were collecting them up, and handing them in to

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various places around the different towns for safekeeping.

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Now, it wasn't until this point that I realized

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that these photos were such a huge part

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of the personal loss these people had felt.

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As they had run from the wave, and for their lives,

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absolutely everything they had,

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everything had to be left behind.

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At the end of my first week there, I found myself

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helping out in an evacuation center in the town.

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I was helping clean the onsen, the communal onsen,

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the huge giant bathtubs.

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This happened to also be a place in the town where

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the evacuation center was collecting the photos.

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This is where people were handing them in,

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and I was honored that day that they actually trusted me

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to help them start hand-cleaning them.

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Now, it was emotional and it was inspiring,

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and I've always heard about thinking outside the box,

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but it wasn't until I had actually gotten outside of my box

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that something happened.

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As I looked through the photos, there were some

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were over a hundred years old,

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some still in the envelope from the processing lab,

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I couldn't help but think as a retoucher

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that I could fix that tear and mend that scratch,

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and I knew hundreds of people who could do the same.

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So that evening, I just reached out on Facebook

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and asked a few of them, and by morning

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the response had been so overwhelming and so positive,

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I knew we had to give it a go.

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So we started retouching photos.

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This was the very first.

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Not terribly damaged, but where the water had caused

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that discoloration on the girl's face

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had to be repaired with such accuracy and delicacy.

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Otherwise, that little girl isn't going to look

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like that little girl anymore, and surely that's as tragic

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as having the photo damaged.

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(Applause)

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Over time, more photos came in, thankfully,

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and more retouchers were needed,

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and so I reached out again on Facebook and LinkedIn,

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and within five days, 80 people wanted to help

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from 12 different countries.

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Within two weeks, I had 150 people

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wanting to join in.

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Within Japan, by July, we'd branched out

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to the neighboring town of Rikuzentakata,

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further north to a town called Yamada.

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Once a week, we would set up our scanning equipment

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in the temporary photo libraries that had been set up,

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where people were reclaiming their photos.

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The older ladies sometimes hadn't seen a scanner before,

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but within 10 minutes of them finding their lost photo,

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they could give it to us, have it scanned,

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uploaded to a cloud server, it would be downloaded

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by a gaijin, a stranger,

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somewhere on the other side of the globe,

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and it'd start being fixed.

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The time it took, however, to get it back

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is a completely different story,

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and it depended obviously on the damage involved.

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It could take an hour. It could take weeks.

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It could take months.

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The kimono in this shot pretty much had to be hand-drawn,

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or pieced together, picking out the remaining parts of color

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and detail that the water hadn't damaged.

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It was very time-consuming.

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Now, all these photos had been damaged by water,

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submerged in salt water, covered in bacteria,

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in sewage, sometimes even in oil, all of which over time

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is going to continue to damage them,

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so hand-cleaning them was a huge part of the project.

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We couldn't retouch the photo unless it was cleaned,

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dry and reclaimed.

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Now, we were lucky with our hand-cleaning.

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We had an amazing local woman who guided us.

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It's very easy to do more damage to those damaged photos.

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As my team leader Wynne once said,

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it's like doing a tattoo on someone.

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You don't get a chance to mess it up.

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The lady who brought us these photos was lucky,

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as far as the photos go.

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She had started hand-cleaning them herself and stopped

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when she realized she was doing more damage.

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She also had duplicates.

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Areas like her husband and her face, which otherwise

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would have been completely impossible to fix,

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we could just put them together in one good photo,

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and remake the whole photo.

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When she collected the photos from us,

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she shared a bit of her story with us.

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Her photos were found by her husband's colleagues

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at a local fire department in the debris

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a long way from where the home had once stood,

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and they'd recognized him.

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The day of the tsunami, he'd actually been in charge

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of making sure the tsunami gates were closed.

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He had to go towards the water as the sirens sounded.

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Her two little boys, not so little anymore, but her two boys

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were both at school, separate schools.

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One of them got caught up in the water.

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It took her a week to find them all again

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and find out that they had all survived.

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The day I gave her the photos also happened to be

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her youngest son's 14th birthday.

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For her, despite all of this, those photos

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were the perfect gift back to him,

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something he could look at again, something he remembered from before

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that wasn't still scarred from that day in March

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when absolutely everything else in his life had changed

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or been destroyed.

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After six months in Japan,

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1,100 volunteers had passed through All Hands,

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hundreds of whom had helped us hand-clean

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over 135,000 photographs,

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the large majority — (Applause) —

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a large majority of which did actually find their home again,

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importantly.

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Over five hundred volunteers around the globe

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helped us get 90 families hundreds of photographs back,

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fully restored and retouched.

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During this time, we hadn't really spent more than

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about a thousand dollars in equipment and materials,

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most of which was printer inks.

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We take photos constantly.

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A photo is a reminder of someone or something,

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a place, a relationship, a loved one.

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They're our memory-keepers and our histories,

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the last thing we would grab

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and the first thing you'd go back to look for.

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That's all this project was about,

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about restoring those little bits of humanity,

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giving someone that connection back.

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When a photo like this can be returned to someone like this,

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it makes a huge difference

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in the lives of the person receiving it.

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The project's also made a big difference in the lives of the retouchers.

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For some of them, it's given them a connection

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to something bigger, giving something back,

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using their talents on something

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other than skinny models and perfect skin.

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I would like to conclude by reading an email

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I got from one of them, Cindy,

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the day I finally got back from Japan after six months.

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"As I worked, I couldn't help but think about the individuals

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and the stories represented in the images.

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One in particular, a photo of women of all ages,

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from grandmother to little girl, gathered around a baby,

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struck a chord, because a similar photo from my family,

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my grandmother and mother, myself,

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and newborn daughter, hangs on our wall.

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Across the globe, throughout the ages,

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our basic needs are just the same, aren't they?"

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Thank you. (Applause)

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(Applause)