Rescued Film Project Gives Glimpse of Forgotten World War II Images

Rolls of film have long exited the mainstream way of developing pictures as the digital age has ushered in an easier and less costly approach to keeping memories alive. Levi Bettwieser, however, sees the value in the forgotten media and have taken it upon himself to go through the painstaking process of saving some for posterity. Calling it The Rescued Film Project, the photographer from Idaho takes rolls of film canisters from thrift shops and from people sending them in from around the globe and develops them hoping to reconnect them with their original owner. Connecting old technology with the new, he develops negatives from the films and uses a high resolution scanner to bring out the finer details before uploading them to his site and to social media hoping that someone would claim the images. In this particular instance, 31 undeveloped rolls turned out to be quite a historic find as long forgotten images of World War II was clearly the star of the recovered films. Be sure to check out his site for information on how to donate films and to check out other salvaged images captured from the 1930s to the late 1990s.