How to uncurl a long group photo from early 1920's

[OpenWater]

My brothers and I recently found a group photo of my grandmother's high school graduating class from 1923. It had been rolled into a tube and then placed (apparently) in a hot attic. Needless to say, the fibers in the paper are deteriorated and there are several tears in it. My guess is that a very slow steaming process might start to swell the fibers, permitting it to be unrolled. If I can get it reasonably flat, I'll then scan it - perhaps in sections. An additional guess is that it is about 24 inches long by 8 high; I can't really tell until it is unrolled. Thanks in advance for your suggestions.

[Philip]

I spent 21 years as an archivist and still teach archivists nowadays. Many archives have small, often made-in-house "steam boxes." They don't actually use steam, but rather an extra jab of humidity, often with pails or trays of room-temperature water a foot or two below a screen on which tightly rolled documents, like old photos, are left for up to a month. Very slowly the documents are opened up and flattened.

If you use too much moisture, it will promote mould. If you try to unroll it too quickly you'll likely crack the emulsion, perhaps losing lots of the image in so doing. So it takes weeks of tiny incremental movement. You'd likely leave it first for a week of acclimatization, and then each day after that you'd open it a bit more.

What you have is an invaluable document, not just to your family, but to your whole community, so have a chat with a local archivist or museum conservator. Good luck with it!

[Philip]

Here is a Google search that yields quite a bit of archival information:

https://www.google.com/search?q=archive ... dification

.

[OpenWater]

Philip,
Your comments and Google search link are both a big help! I would not have thought a month or more would be needed, but that certainly seems the safest way to go. It took the paper a great many years to become as brittle as it is, so I'll take my time. Thanks, again.
Mike