About Recover the Past

Recover the Past is a lost media rescue network for photographs, slides, film, recordings, letters, yearbooks, and personal archives separated from the people they document.

We turn each find into a careful investigation. Available names, dates, handwriting, faces, places, and historical context become a case that genealogists, local historians, alumni groups, and ordinary internet sleuths can help solve.

Our mission is discovery, preservation, identification, and reunion. Public participation remains free, while optional preservation and restoration services give identified families a lasting archive of something they may never have known survived.