For this assignment, I decided to explore the Photogrammar project. The goal of this project is to provide an interactive map to explore 170,000 photographs taken by the FSA and OWI agencies of the U.S. Federal Government during the Great Depression and World War II. You can find a link to the project here. I decided to choose this project due to my background in photography.
Sources
This project is currently maintained by the Digital Scholarship Lab (DSL) and Distant Viewing Lab (DV Lab) at the University of Richmond. The director of the project is Lauren Tilton, Taylor Arnold is in charge of data curation and analysis, Rob Nelson develops and maintains the web-based application, and Nathaniel Ayers is the designer of the site.
Processes
Each photograph on the website is organized as part of a section. It includes information such as photographer, date created, themes, location, and an original description. This is helpful for users to filter searchers to return photographs with specific criteria. Additionally, it is also useful so that users can find photographs that have similarities to others.
Presentation
The website allows users to explore an interactive map of the United States, where they can select specific states and counties to filter images to specific locations. Additionally, there is a search feature where users can filter photographs by photographer, state, county, theme, photo caption, and time range.
One New Question
One question that arose for me as I was exploring the project was if there were criteria for photographs to be added. When I was looking around at various photographs, many of them seemed to have good image resolution, did not contain any over or under-exposed elements, and contained a clear subject matter. I wonder if any photographs were left out of the project due to being deemed “low quality”.
In-Class Questions
I believe the target audience of this project is scholars and the general public. The tool could be especially useful for fields such as history or the arts, but could also prove educational for any ordinary person interested in the subject matter. I believe this project is accessible to all, but particularly useful for individuals studying the Great Depression and World War II era in the United States.
1 thought on “Blog Week 2 – Photogrammar”
Leave a Reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
I find interest in the question that you created, it was also something I noticed in my own exploration of the project. I think considering the need of the project originally made it so that the photographers had to be properly trained in the use of the equipment and thus no under-exposed elements exist or perhaps it is the case that the algorithm used to display the images has some pre-selected images that are the best and shows those first and the ones that are a little worse are left for later.