Advice please - Water damaged prints and negatives

I have friends who recently had a house fire, their family photographs and negatives have gotten wet and are stuck together. In my brief exchange with them it sounds like they are in stacks and have at least partially dried out. What advice can I offer them for separating them with the least amount of damage? I don't have any more details other than that they had duplicate prints stored elsewhere in the house and they are hoping that between the 2 sets of prints they can put together a fairly complete set. I believe they are photographic prints that were made circa 1970s through the 1990s probably developed by some budget lab back in the day.

Your help will be greatly appreciated!

wet

In the 1980s I had my apartment vandalized and thousands of b&w negs were thrown to the floor and a water hose was poked through a window and turned on. So I ended up with a few hundred rolls of developed b&w film cocooned in their glassine sleeves. When dried out, I found that the two strips of film that touched the glassine envelopes were pretty firmly welded to the glassine but the strips on the inside were in fine condition, untouched. Looking into things further I found that a lot of soaking in running water and brisk rubbing with a thumb would pull most of the glassine material off the negatives so that most of the b&w negs have been saved. Luckilly I had stored my "really great negatives" elsewhere and they did not get touched. It was not a lot of fun.

This is a theory, not real practical experience, but my expectation would be trying to separate them dry will result in damage with emulsion sticking etc.

What I would try is take a small sample and actually drop them into water. On the basis that old negs and prints would have been wet-processed originally, it may be that this is the best way to unstick them, then hang them to dry just as you would with fresh-processed.

As I say, this is my theory, and not based on experience, but i would give it a try.

hi tony

you might contact a local museum or the new england document conservation center ( http://www.nedcc.org/ )
to see what they might have to say about your problem.

i have had problems in my past with water logged negatives and prints and was not as fortunate as
snapguy ... the emulsion was firmly stuck together on the prints and the emulsion had
removed itself from the 35mm substrate it was once attached to. the nedcc wasn't around then
but just the same, my situation was a lost cause ..

If they are color negatives and can be successfully separated, they should probably washed and then re-stabilized.

If the prints and negatives are important then this sounds like a job for a professional conservator.

Sorry to hear of this. We certainly have twisted members in this species called the human race.

This is a piece of purely intuitive reasoning which as we know can be flawed but I'd go along with Mr Rusty's thoughts. Given that, as far as I am aware, film can survive a long time fully immersed in water, I'd certainly try another longish soak

It might not work but unless someone has evidence that immersion in water creates problems and if so after how long, then full immersion again may be the "lot to gain and nothing to lose" strategy

Whatever you decide, let us know how it goes

pentaxuser

Thank you for the input. I don't know the full extent of the damage, but I did offer to do scanning of the prints and/or negatives to help them reassemble their collection of family photos (assuming they can be saved in reasonable condition). This poor family has been through a real ordeal, major health crisis, they were actually at the emergency room when the house caught fire. The children and dogs got out, but they did lose a cat. I'll let you all know how they make out.