Saving and salvaging water damaged photos

Preserving and cleaning water damage photos
Keep photos immersed in cold water until you can care for them. If they dry out in a pile they will stick together and sustain more damaged. Rinse the cold water in your bucket or container until it is clear. Do not apply pressured water directly on the pictures because it can cause damage. Gently fill the container and pour out until the water pours out clear.
Keep water cold so that mold will have a harder time growing. Cold water will also take longer to deteriorate the photos than warm water.
If it is going to be more then 3-4 days before you can care for your photos, it might be best to freeze them and thaw them out when you are ready to care for them.
Let photos separate by themselves in the water. After a couple of days, if some are still stuck together, you will have to try to carefully peal them apart and hope they don’t get further damage.

Drying water damage photos
Find a non-humid room with good air flow and spread the photos out on a nylon screen, blotter paper, or high quality paper towels. Make sure your photos are completely bone dry before you stack them together or put them in plastic. If wet photos dry while stacked together they are almost impossible to separate, and if they are not completely dry when stored in bags they can start growing mold.

Older photos on the glass and metal prints such as Daguerreotypes and tintypes are more fragile and more difficult to salvage. These you just want to dry as quickly as you can and hope for the best.