Ten Faces, Cracks Across Every One

The photograph

Three generations of a family arranged outside a brick house — grandparents seated at the centre, adult children standing behind, young children at the front. Early twentieth century.

The damage

Long cracks ran diagonally across the print in both directions, passing through several faces. The surface was scuffed throughout, the corners were worn, and age had reduced the tonal range so that the darker clothing merged into one flat mass.

The work

Every crack was repaired individually and each of the ten faces treated as its own small restoration. In a group photograph the risk is that repaired faces start to look alike, so I worked outward from each person's surviving features rather than applying a single approach across all of them. The colourisation follows the same logic: the family are dressed in the dark wools and starched whites of the period, but they are not all wearing the same black, and the picture only reads correctly when those differences survive.

This was a torn and cracked photo restoration job — see more on torn and cracked photo restoration.