The Regional Museum continues working on restoring the photographs of 460 families affected by the DANA

The project is seeking more volunteers to continue restoring thousands of family photographs

16 October 2025 – The effects of the DANA that struck the comarca a year ago not only caused material and economic damage, but also a major emotional loss: that of family memories. Photographs, tapes and albums that tell who we are as a community and form part of our collective heritage. With the aim of preserving this memory, the project Salvem les Fotos was born, which today has become a key initiative to recover the shared identity of the affected towns.

The Comarcal Museum of L’Horta Sud has established itself as the project’s main restoration laboratory with more than 400,000 photographs. To date, it has received material from 460 families and has managed to extract more than 43,000 images, grouped into 1,800 albums and 500 boxes. Even so, 60% of the material is still pending intervention and only nine families have been able to recover their photographs so far.

The project has also expanded its work thanks to collaboration with La Xarxa de Cinema Domèstic, incorporating the recovery of magnetic tapes and film reels. Currently, 430 audiovisual items in various formats —VHS, DVD, TDK tapes, Super 8, miniDV, vinyl records and CDs— are being restored, totaling more than 30,700 minutes of video, the equivalent of 512 hours of visual memory still to be processed.

Exhibition

In this context, and with the aim of giving visibility to this work and paying tribute to all the people who have entrusted their memories to the field laboratories of Salvem les Fotos, the museum is opening the exhibition “Memory and Resilience. Photography as a testimony of life”, which will take place on Wednesday, 12 November at 7:00 p.m. at the Comarcal Museum of L’Horta Sud.

This exhibition is intended as a tribute to the strength of collective memory and the capacity to rebuild what seemed lost, through the images that have survived the DANA and the personal stories they safeguard. The exhibition can be visited Monday to Friday from 10:00 to 14:00, and on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 16:00 to 18:00.

Volunteering

This work is possible thanks to a wide network of professionals and volunteers. The team is made up of conservators, restorers, art historians, photographers, anthropologists and other heritage specialists, working side by side with more than 190 volunteers from different countries and institutions. In addition, the project has staff hired by the Universitat de València and the Fundació Horta Sud, as well as a stable volunteer team that collaborates weekly at the museum.

The Regional Museum calls on the public to join this recovery effort. Those interested can write to museu@museuhortasud.com
to participate as volunteers. Collaboration hours are Monday to Friday from 9:00 to 15:00, and Tuesdays and Thursdays until 18:00, with a minimum commitment of two hours per week.

More about the project

The Salvem les Fotos project was launched by the Heritage Area of the Universitat de València and is supported by the five Valencian public universities, as well as institutions such as l’Etno, ICOM and the Spanish Group of Conservation. In this vein, the Fundació Horta Sud has contributed €12,800 for materials and €10,000 for contracts, a decisive contribution to ensure the project’s development within the Horta Sud Recovery and Transformation Plan. This plan aims not only to rebuild the physical spaces affected by the DANA, but also to reweave the emotional, cultural and community fabric of the comarca.

Moreover, in recent months, several foundations, entities and collectives have joined the project to collaborate and provide financial or in-kind support, thereby helping to strengthen its sustainability and reach.