So recently I’ve had a lot of photography assignments up in Tohoku, in northern Japan. Tohoku is as you’ll no doubt remember the location of the massive earthquake and tsunami last year on March 11th, and the subsequent Fukushima nuclear disaster.

One thing I notice a lot as I walk around in the tsunami zone, as it is known, is the amount of family photos and family photo albums which lay around, or have been picked up and piled neatly by the road side. Inevitably these family photos are covered in mud, or half wiped clean. Sometimes I flick through them, but feel that I shouldn’t, that I’m prying on someone’s personal life without their permission. And of course there are numerous photos of kids, and you wonder how they’re doing ? Did they survive? Are they alive? Or even, god forbid, still missing ?

Above photo shows a family photo album, rescued from the mud of Rikuzentakata, Tohoku, Japan. ©Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert 2012, all rights reserved.

And then last week, up in Minami-Soma, I was with a journalist and fixer and we were talking and photographing three farmers. Nice old guys, happy to chat, and to tell us how worried they are about the radiation on their land. We discussed the tsunami, the tsunami day itself and how the recovery is going. One of the things they mentioned and which struck me was that the thing they miss most, or despair at having lost most, is family photos albums. As myself and journalist, and fixer, finished up with them, the old guys asked for photos with us, and for us to send them to them. They wish to start building family albums afresh, creating new memories.  It was of course a pleasure to be asked and to supply them with images, but sad. Can you imagine losing all the images you ever had of your family and ancestors ? Especially if perhaps one of those family members also died?

Above photo shows myself (back, left), with journalist Richard Lloyd Parry (back, right), and farmers (left to right) Yoshio Ikeda, Ishizuki Masatsugu and Tanabe Kazuo, in Minami-Soma, Tohoku, Japan. ©Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert 2012, all rights reserved.

A few organisations have set up in the aftermath of the Tohoku tsunami with the aim of helping people with this very problem of family photos and missing albums. Fujifilm stepped up to the mark very quickly and have been helping to restore photographs damaged by seawater and mud, read about it here.

Another organisation Photohoku.org is taking cameras and film, up to the affected areas in Tohoku, taking images of the survivors, and mounting them in albums, and helping people to start new photo albums. A very worthy cause, and great idea. Having met these 3 farmers who asked me for photos I can see how this means a lot to people.

Above photo shows family photos rescued from the tsunami mud, Rikuzentakata, in Tohoku, Japan. ©Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert 2012, all rights reserved.

And there is the LostAndFound311 project, another project which aims to find, clean and digitise family photos and albums from the tsunami mud of Tohoku and reunite the images with the people who are in them. Some of these images have even been exhibited in Tokyo. And as the website says “… 680 photo albums and 12,000 photographs have been returned to their owners by using the data which took 3 months to build.” Fantastic work.

Both Photohoku.org and LostAndFound311 project accept donations to help them with their work, you can find the details via their respective websites if you’d like to contribute.

I am sure there are many other such projects also, and apologies if I haven’t linked to them here. These are just links I’d seen and noted. If there are others, please feel free to list them via Comments below. Thank you.