Healing memories by restoring photographs damaged by Hurricane Ian

Hurricane Ian destroyed countless homes and the belongings inside including pictures full of memories.

Many have seen pictures washed up on their lawns of people they’ve never met, but one photographer is working to restore those pictures and return them to their owners.

Scattered across Krista Kowalczyk’s dining room table you’ll find different photographs, headshots, and baby pictures all of which are other people’s treasured memories.

“You really can see these were completely in water, so this is pretty bad, and honestly these are the ones I think people are saying “oh that’s trash, it’s completely ruined,” Kowalczyk said.

Kowalczyk is a professional photographer and owner of Impressions Photography. She’s using her talents to help restore pictures that were damaged in Hurricane Ian.

“I’ve just been giving them a quick rinse off if there’s any residue or that ink and then sitting them out just to dry here,” Kowalczyk said.

Friday afternoon she sat down with WINK News and talked about how it all started after helping a friend clean out her home.

“She had photographs spread across the lawn, somewhere in albums somewhere picture frames, and she said, ‘Hey, Chris, do you think these are trash? What should we do with these,’ and I right away, went over and saw him like we could totally save these,” Kowalczyk said.

“In the process of helping her neighbor, or actually her father’s neighbors, they would come over and ask me questions. So I tried to help them and kind of posted a few things on social media. Just because I realized this was a need and things people needed advice on,” Kowalczyk said.

Going on to explain after that people began contacting her, but it was too much for one person. So, she took to a national forum for photographers to ask for some help.

“So many of them reached back out and were like, ‘Absolutely,’ I’ve had a retired photographer, Photoshop expert, random people from all over the country,” Kowalczyk said.

And their reactions made it all worth it.

“I guess I really just thought I was doing something little and you know, helping a little bit but I mean it has had an impact on people and I know it’s brought smiles to other people’s faces and that’s really important too,” Kowalczyk said.