WEBVTT 00:00:01.267 --> 00:00:05.321 Before March, 2011, I was a photographic retoucher 00:00:05.321 --> 00:00:08.268 based in New York City. 00:00:08.268 --> 00:00:10.324 We're pale, gray creatures. 00:00:10.324 --> 00:00:12.384 We hide in dark, windowless rooms, 00:00:12.384 --> 00:00:14.712 and generally avoid sunlight. 00:00:14.712 --> 00:00:18.976 We make skinny models skinnier, perfect skin more perfect, 00:00:18.976 --> 00:00:20.956 and the impossible possible, 00:00:20.956 --> 00:00:25.006 and we get criticized in the press all the time, 00:00:25.006 --> 00:00:28.507 but some of us are actually talented artists 00:00:28.507 --> 00:00:30.587 with years of experience 00:00:30.587 --> 00:00:34.491 and a real appreciation for images and photography. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:34.491 --> 00:00:39.655 On March 11, 2011, I watched from home, as the rest 00:00:39.655 --> 00:00:43.491 of the world did, as the tragic events unfolded in Japan. 00:00:43.491 --> 00:00:45.664 Soon after, an organization I volunteer with, 00:00:45.664 --> 00:00:49.506 All Hands Volunteers, were on the ground, within days, 00:00:49.506 --> 00:00:52.338 working as part of the response efforts. 00:00:52.338 --> 00:00:54.634 I, along with hundreds of other volunteers, 00:00:54.634 --> 00:00:56.298 knew we couldn't just sit at home, 00:00:56.298 --> 00:01:00.022 so I decided to join them for three weeks. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:00.022 --> 00:01:03.667 On May the 13th, I made my way to the town of Ōfunato. 00:01:03.667 --> 00:01:07.347 It's a small fishing town in Iwate Prefecture, 00:01:07.347 --> 00:01:09.754 about 50,000 people, 00:01:09.754 --> 00:01:12.559 one of the first that was hit by the wave. 00:01:12.559 --> 00:01:15.370 The waters here have been recorded at reaching 00:01:15.370 --> 00:01:18.072 over 24 meters in height, 00:01:18.072 --> 00:01:19.781 and traveled over two miles inland. 00:01:19.781 --> 00:01:23.323 As you can imagine, the town had been devastated. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:23.323 --> 00:01:25.854 We pulled debris from canals and ditches. 00:01:25.854 --> 00:01:29.285 We cleaned schools. We de-mudded and gutted homes 00:01:29.285 --> 00:01:31.783 ready for renovation and rehabilitation. 00:01:31.783 --> 00:01:36.235 We cleared tons and tons of stinking, rotting fish carcasses 00:01:36.235 --> 00:01:38.454 from the local fish processing plant. 00:01:38.454 --> 00:01:41.863 We got dirty, and we loved it. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:41.863 --> 00:01:44.980 For weeks, all the volunteers and locals alike 00:01:44.980 --> 00:01:47.220 had been finding similar things. 00:01:47.220 --> 00:01:50.166 They'd been finding photos and photo albums 00:01:50.166 --> 00:01:52.799 and cameras and SD cards. 00:01:52.799 --> 00:01:54.015 And everyone was doing the same. 00:01:54.015 --> 00:01:56.680 They were collecting them up, and handing them in to 00:01:56.680 --> 00:01:59.853 various places around the different towns for safekeeping. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:59.853 --> 00:02:02.969 Now, it wasn't until this point that I realized 00:02:02.969 --> 00:02:05.399 that these photos were such a huge part 00:02:05.399 --> 00:02:08.399 of the personal loss these people had felt. 00:02:08.399 --> 00:02:11.193 As they had run from the wave, and for their lives, 00:02:11.193 --> 00:02:13.713 absolutely everything they had, 00:02:13.713 --> 00:02:16.537 everything had to be left behind. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:16.537 --> 00:02:18.822 At the end of my first week there, I found myself 00:02:18.822 --> 00:02:22.016 helping out in an evacuation center in the town. 00:02:22.016 --> 00:02:25.351 I was helping clean the onsen, the communal onsen, 00:02:25.351 --> 00:02:27.657 the huge giant bathtubs. 00:02:27.657 --> 00:02:30.094 This happened to also be a place in the town where 00:02:30.094 --> 00:02:33.098 the evacuation center was collecting the photos. 00:02:33.098 --> 00:02:35.023 This is where people were handing them in, 00:02:35.023 --> 00:02:37.531 and I was honored that day that they actually trusted me 00:02:37.531 --> 00:02:40.175 to help them start hand-cleaning them. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:40.175 --> 00:02:43.224 Now, it was emotional and it was inspiring, 00:02:43.224 --> 00:02:46.982 and I've always heard about thinking outside the box, 00:02:46.982 --> 00:02:50.393 but it wasn't until I had actually gotten outside of my box 00:02:50.393 --> 00:02:52.820 that something happened. 00:02:52.820 --> 00:02:54.873 As I looked through the photos, there were some 00:02:54.873 --> 00:02:56.639 were over a hundred years old, 00:02:56.639 --> 00:03:00.223 some still in the envelope from the processing lab, 00:03:00.223 --> 00:03:02.113 I couldn't help but think as a retoucher 00:03:02.113 --> 00:03:04.938 that I could fix that tear and mend that scratch, 00:03:04.938 --> 00:03:08.975 and I knew hundreds of people who could do the same. 00:03:08.975 --> 00:03:11.362 So that evening, I just reached out on Facebook 00:03:11.362 --> 00:03:13.556 and asked a few of them, and by morning 00:03:13.556 --> 00:03:17.035 the response had been so overwhelming and so positive, 00:03:17.035 --> 00:03:18.900 I knew we had to give it a go. 00:03:18.900 --> 00:03:21.754 So we started retouching photos. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:21.754 --> 00:03:24.547 This was the very first. 00:03:24.547 --> 00:03:29.154 Not terribly damaged, but where the water had caused 00:03:29.154 --> 00:03:31.340 that discoloration on the girl's face 00:03:31.340 --> 00:03:34.943 had to be repaired with such accuracy and delicacy. 00:03:34.943 --> 00:03:37.238 Otherwise, that little girl isn't going to look 00:03:37.238 --> 00:03:39.938 like that little girl anymore, and surely that's as tragic 00:03:39.938 --> 00:03:43.482 as having the photo damaged. 00:03:43.482 --> 00:03:49.810 (Applause) NOTE Paragraph 00:03:49.810 --> 00:03:53.023 Over time, more photos came in, thankfully, 00:03:53.023 --> 00:03:56.497 and more retouchers were needed, 00:03:56.497 --> 00:03:59.435 and so I reached out again on Facebook and LinkedIn, 00:03:59.435 --> 00:04:02.518 and within five days, 80 people wanted to help 00:04:02.518 --> 00:04:04.487 from 12 different countries. 00:04:04.487 --> 00:04:06.856 Within two weeks, I had 150 people 00:04:06.856 --> 00:04:08.727 wanting to join in. 00:04:08.727 --> 00:04:11.103 Within Japan, by July, we'd branched out 00:04:11.103 --> 00:04:13.715 to the neighboring town of Rikuzentakata, 00:04:13.715 --> 00:04:16.109 further north to a town called Yamada. 00:04:16.109 --> 00:04:19.377 Once a week, we would set up our scanning equipment 00:04:19.377 --> 00:04:21.885 in the temporary photo libraries that had been set up, 00:04:21.885 --> 00:04:24.258 where people were reclaiming their photos. 00:04:24.258 --> 00:04:28.090 The older ladies sometimes hadn't seen a scanner before, 00:04:28.090 --> 00:04:31.964 but within 10 minutes of them finding their lost photo, 00:04:31.964 --> 00:04:33.873 they could give it to us, have it scanned, 00:04:33.873 --> 00:04:35.887 uploaded to a cloud server, it would be downloaded 00:04:35.887 --> 00:04:38.520 by a gaijin, a stranger, 00:04:38.520 --> 00:04:40.623 somewhere on the other side of the globe, 00:04:40.623 --> 00:04:42.987 and it'd start being fixed. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:42.987 --> 00:04:46.125 The time it took, however, to get it back 00:04:46.125 --> 00:04:48.172 is a completely different story, 00:04:48.172 --> 00:04:50.760 and it depended obviously on the damage involved. 00:04:50.760 --> 00:04:52.493 It could take an hour. It could take weeks. 00:04:52.493 --> 00:04:54.597 It could take months. 00:04:54.597 --> 00:04:58.714 The kimono in this shot pretty much had to be hand-drawn, 00:04:58.714 --> 00:05:02.416 or pieced together, picking out the remaining parts of color 00:05:02.416 --> 00:05:04.846 and detail that the water hadn't damaged. 00:05:04.846 --> 00:05:07.591 It was very time-consuming. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:07.591 --> 00:05:10.212 Now, all these photos had been damaged by water, 00:05:10.212 --> 00:05:13.543 submerged in salt water, covered in bacteria, 00:05:13.543 --> 00:05:16.984 in sewage, sometimes even in oil, all of which over time 00:05:16.984 --> 00:05:18.928 is going to continue to damage them, 00:05:18.928 --> 00:05:22.044 so hand-cleaning them was a huge part of the project. 00:05:22.044 --> 00:05:25.014 We couldn't retouch the photo unless it was cleaned, 00:05:25.014 --> 00:05:28.030 dry and reclaimed. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:28.030 --> 00:05:30.482 Now, we were lucky with our hand-cleaning. 00:05:30.482 --> 00:05:33.719 We had an amazing local woman who guided us. 00:05:33.719 --> 00:05:37.912 It's very easy to do more damage to those damaged photos. 00:05:37.912 --> 00:05:39.697 As my team leader Wynne once said, 00:05:39.697 --> 00:05:41.643 it's like doing a tattoo on someone. 00:05:41.643 --> 00:05:45.174 You don't get a chance to mess it up. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:45.174 --> 00:05:48.157 The lady who brought us these photos was lucky, 00:05:48.157 --> 00:05:50.387 as far as the photos go. 00:05:50.387 --> 00:05:52.769 She had started hand-cleaning them herself and stopped 00:05:52.769 --> 00:05:55.188 when she realized she was doing more damage. 00:05:55.188 --> 00:05:57.439 She also had duplicates. 00:05:57.439 --> 00:06:00.532 Areas like her husband and her face, which otherwise 00:06:00.532 --> 00:06:02.636 would have been completely impossible to fix, 00:06:02.636 --> 00:06:05.494 we could just put them together in one good photo, 00:06:05.494 --> 00:06:07.946 and remake the whole photo. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:07.946 --> 00:06:10.624 When she collected the photos from us, 00:06:10.624 --> 00:06:12.987 she shared a bit of her story with us. 00:06:12.987 --> 00:06:15.947 Her photos were found by her husband's colleagues 00:06:15.947 --> 00:06:17.937 at a local fire department in the debris 00:06:17.937 --> 00:06:21.053 a long way from where the home had once stood, 00:06:21.053 --> 00:06:23.228 and they'd recognized him. 00:06:23.228 --> 00:06:25.509 The day of the tsunami, he'd actually been in charge 00:06:25.509 --> 00:06:28.036 of making sure the tsunami gates were closed. 00:06:28.036 --> 00:06:31.164 He had to go towards the water as the sirens sounded. 00:06:31.164 --> 00:06:34.606 Her two little boys, not so little anymore, but her two boys 00:06:34.606 --> 00:06:36.796 were both at school, separate schools. 00:06:36.796 --> 00:06:39.364 One of them got caught up in the water. 00:06:39.364 --> 00:06:41.311 It took her a week to find them all again 00:06:41.311 --> 00:06:43.708 and find out that they had all survived. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:43.708 --> 00:06:46.638 The day I gave her the photos also happened to be 00:06:46.638 --> 00:06:50.581 her youngest son's 14th birthday. 00:06:50.581 --> 00:06:54.254 For her, despite all of this, those photos 00:06:54.254 --> 00:06:56.965 were the perfect gift back to him, 00:06:56.965 --> 00:07:00.061 something he could look at again, something he remembered from before 00:07:00.070 --> 00:07:04.328 that wasn't still scarred from that day in March 00:07:04.328 --> 00:07:07.143 when absolutely everything else in his life had changed 00:07:07.143 --> 00:07:11.292 or been destroyed. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:11.292 --> 00:07:13.149 After six months in Japan, 00:07:13.149 --> 00:07:16.299 1,100 volunteers had passed through All Hands, 00:07:16.299 --> 00:07:18.549 hundreds of whom had helped us hand-clean 00:07:18.549 --> 00:07:21.789 over 135,000 photographs, 00:07:21.789 --> 00:07:27.493 the large majority — (Applause) — 00:07:27.493 --> 00:07:30.723 a large majority of which did actually find their home again, 00:07:30.723 --> 00:07:33.478 importantly. 00:07:33.478 --> 00:07:36.651 Over five hundred volunteers around the globe 00:07:36.651 --> 00:07:41.309 helped us get 90 families hundreds of photographs back, 00:07:41.309 --> 00:07:43.559 fully restored and retouched. 00:07:43.559 --> 00:07:46.012 During this time, we hadn't really spent more than 00:07:46.012 --> 00:07:48.858 about a thousand dollars in equipment and materials, 00:07:48.858 --> 00:07:52.188 most of which was printer inks. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:52.188 --> 00:07:55.075 We take photos constantly. 00:07:55.075 --> 00:07:57.644 A photo is a reminder of someone or something, 00:07:57.644 --> 00:08:00.502 a place, a relationship, a loved one. 00:08:00.502 --> 00:08:03.011 They're our memory-keepers and our histories, 00:08:03.011 --> 00:08:05.723 the last thing we would grab 00:08:05.723 --> 00:08:08.231 and the first thing you'd go back to look for. 00:08:08.231 --> 00:08:10.335 That's all this project was about, 00:08:10.335 --> 00:08:13.766 about restoring those little bits of humanity, 00:08:13.766 --> 00:08:15.878 giving someone that connection back. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:15.878 --> 00:08:21.571 When a photo like this can be returned to someone like this, 00:08:21.571 --> 00:08:23.655 it makes a huge difference 00:08:23.655 --> 00:08:26.440 in the lives of the person receiving it. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:26.440 --> 00:08:30.243 The project's also made a big difference in the lives of the retouchers. 00:08:30.243 --> 00:08:33.314 For some of them, it's given them a connection 00:08:33.314 --> 00:08:35.846 to something bigger, giving something back, 00:08:35.846 --> 00:08:37.725 using their talents on something 00:08:37.725 --> 00:08:41.145 other than skinny models and perfect skin. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:41.145 --> 00:08:43.758 I would like to conclude by reading an email 00:08:43.758 --> 00:08:46.188 I got from one of them, Cindy, 00:08:46.188 --> 00:08:50.790 the day I finally got back from Japan after six months. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:50.790 --> 00:08:54.545 "As I worked, I couldn't help but think about the individuals 00:08:54.545 --> 00:08:57.694 and the stories represented in the images. 00:08:57.694 --> 00:09:01.181 One in particular, a photo of women of all ages, 00:09:01.181 --> 00:09:05.557 from grandmother to little girl, gathered around a baby, 00:09:05.557 --> 00:09:09.079 struck a chord, because a similar photo from my family, 00:09:09.079 --> 00:09:11.531 my grandmother and mother, myself, 00:09:11.531 --> 00:09:14.940 and newborn daughter, hangs on our wall. 00:09:14.940 --> 00:09:18.094 Across the globe, throughout the ages, 00:09:18.094 --> 00:09:21.983 our basic needs are just the same, aren't they?" 00:09:21.983 --> 00:09:24.300 Thank you. (Applause) 00:09:24.300 --> 00:09:27.766 (Applause)