Restoring photographs that are hurricane-damaged

Five Town Pixel owner looks to save storm victims memories

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What would you grab if you had to evacuate your home?
After family members and pets, many people would say their photo albums, but in many emergencies people don’t even have time to grab their most treasured memories.

While watching the devastation wrought by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, Zahir Dastagir, the owner of Five Town Pixel, a photography store in Hewlett, known as “Zee,” decided to help those who were affected in the best way he knows how.

Dastagir created a Gofundme page to help cover the cost of shipping, scanning and restoring the photo albums of people whose film memories were damaged by the storms. He scans the photos and then digitally edits the photos to remove as much water damage as he can.

Unfortunately, due to Hurricane Sandy that struck Long Island in 2012, Dastagir has had experience helping families deal with photo destruction. “I saw how devastated people were about losing their memories during Sandy,” he said, “I wanted to offer a helping hand to those people down in Texas and Florida.”

Fay Kollander, of Woodmere had a few of her photo albums restored by Dastagir after Sandy. He was able to save three out of the four albums she gave him. “It’s not a good feeling [to go through losing their albums], but I’m glad he was able to restore what he could,” she said. “It’s a weird feeling, like OK thank god we’re OK, but these photos can’t just be replaced.”

Anne Goldman, also of Woodmere, had a similar situation. “Those albums are what you want to try to take with you, you can get new stuff, but you can’t replace the memories,” she said, adding that these photos had such sentimental value and it’s a way to watch her children grow up, again.

So far Dastagir has restored three of her albums, is working on a fourth, but couldn’t save one of her wedding albums. The Goldmans had their albums stored in their den, which was flooded by more than two feet of water. Goldman joked that her best advice is to, “Keep your photo albums up high.”

However, if it’s too late to heed her warning, Dastagir said time is of the essence when trying to preserve and restore water-damaged photos. “It’s critical that people send their albums in as quickly as possible,” he said.

To donate to help with the effort to restore the photographs of the victims of Harvey and Irma, go to gofundme.com/hurricaneharveyirmaphotos.