Sticky-Album Immigration Photos

When album-page residue reaches a immigration photo, the result is yellow stripes of adhesive on the front and back, torn emulsion where the print was peeled off, and a tacky film. The cause is nearly always the self-adhesive magnetic albums sold from the 1970s onward, whose glue yellows and bonds to the print, and immigration photos kept in albums, frames and boxes were all exposed to it.

The restoration reads the sticky-album immigration photo as a repair job: it removes the album-page residue and rebuilds what was underneath from the surrounding grain, keeping the luggage tags, the clothing and any writing on the back as photographed. Faces of a family at the dock, at a ship rail or in the doorway of a first home in a new country that were lost to the album-page residue are plausible reconstructions, so compare them with other pictures.

For sticky-album immigration photos the order is album-page residue first, faces second, upscale last, each step taking the previous result. Standard suits a immigration photo for a screen; Pro or Max gives a sticky-album print more detail for reprinting.