How I invented the time machine - Photo Time Machine
For most of my life I was involved in documentary films, video and photography, and had nothing to do with business and IT. I was afraid of such words. The idea of ​​creating a project came precisely through the subject of archival photography that interests me. It began with a thought about the social network “On the District”, uniting people according to the principle of belonging to a small location and giving the opportunity to restore and keep its chronicle. Gradually, the idea evolved into an international project that would allow time travel and trace / create a visual history of the world through old photographs. It is peace that is not an exaggeration.
The US National Archives
During the existence of a photograph (more precisely, from the beginning of its active dissemination, as a new media - from about the middle of the 19th century) all spheres of human life have been documented in detail. What did the cities look like, how did people dress, sport, fashion, technology, celebrity, politics and so on. - absolutely everything.
')
Amphibious bike 'Cyclomer'. Paris, 1932. The Nationaal Archief of the Netherlands
I studied the situation and found a marked revival in this area. There is definitely an interest in visual history. Google bought and uploads to the network the photo archives of the magazine Life, and / d “Kommersant” acquired the archives of “Ogonyok” along with the magazine itself. There are a number of sites, blogs, pages in the social. networks dedicated to the visual history of specific places - cities, states. Most are American. This is understandable, in America there were more cameras, more pictures were taken, they were preserved in the best condition.
One wheel motorcycle (invented by Italian M. Goventosa de Udine). Maximum speed: 150 kilometers per hour. The Nationaal Archief of the Netherlands
There are a couple of resources claiming global hegemony, but one of them is exclusively about city landscapes, and the second seems to me, as its potential user, so ugly and uncomfortable that I want to close it immediately. There is little content in them, few people know about them (one exists for 3 years and the second is slightly less). It may seem that I gloat without having done anything myself. It is not, I am glad that they exist. I have the opportunity to learn from someone else's experience. I am very grateful for such things.
Mccord museum
The foregoing has convinced me that the niche is free and there is room for development, while the interest in visual anthropology is immense. And we (I'm not the only one) started developing. More precisely, not immediately. At first I, like most new ones, collected a bunch of rakes, spent a lot of time on the extra.
Bobsleighing at Ste. Agathe, QC, 1911. Notman photographic Archives - McCord Museum
At the moment, everything looks like this.
The project will be presented in the form of a resource and a mobile application, allowing (I repeat) to get acquainted with the visual history of the world through old and archival photos. The period covered is from the 1820s, when Niepce took the oldest of the surviving photos, and up to minus 15 years from now (one of the rules — uploaded photos should be over 15 years old - to be removed from the present).
Boy playing with a radio-controlled toy bus. Almelo, The Netherlands, 1957. The Nationaal Archief of the Netherlands
We began to integrate photo archives of various countries into a convenient navigation system - both large institutional (national archives and libraries, museums ...), both private and amateur. Combining content from different sources occurs through tags - temporary, geolocation and thematic (key words). Thus, we get a tool that allows you to carry out accurate and detailed search. As for one of the types of tags, and for two or three of them simultaneously - they are synchronized.
Lieutenant Kirk Booth of the US Signals Corps being lifted at Camp Devens, Ayer, Massachusetts. American Unofficial Collection of World War I Photographs, compiled 1917 - 1918. The US National Archives
The mobile application will give all the delights of a geolocation resource - the ability to watch content with reference to the current location and time, leave routes and explore them. What is called, augmented reality.
We take the first content from large archives (they provide us with this content, they show great interest). Already, without a prototype, we have collected more than 100k photos. In comparison with the total volume, this, of course, is not enough. But for the start it is not bad - we have something to offer to the first users.
Biplane over mountains, circa 1930s, Seattle Municipal Archives
Copyright
We are a UGC-resource (users generated content) - the content is generated by the users themselves). Thus, it will be licensed by them - under Creative Commons. The rightholders and their representatives themselves determine which rights they can use to use their photos - only viewing, use for research and educational purposes, for commercial purposes, and so on. Uploading photos, they complement the picture of the world and, in principle, leave their visible mark on history. We boldly hope that the project will be of interest to a wide audience, as it will be able to provide material on various fields and areas of knowledge. This is an encyclopedic resource. We are planning to launch the beta version for May-June.
Jess Dixon in his flying C. 1940. State Library and Archives of Florida
I tried to describe everything in general and, of course, missed something. I would be happy to feedback and questions. If you want to learn more about the project and support it, you can do it at Kickstarter.
The US National Archives
During the existence of a photograph (more precisely, from the beginning of its active dissemination, as a new media - from about the middle of the 19th century) all spheres of human life have been documented in detail. What did the cities look like, how did people dress, sport, fashion, technology, celebrity, politics and so on. - absolutely everything.
')
Amphibious bike 'Cyclomer'. Paris, 1932. The Nationaal Archief of the Netherlands
I studied the situation and found a marked revival in this area. There is definitely an interest in visual history. Google bought and uploads to the network the photo archives of the magazine Life, and / d “Kommersant” acquired the archives of “Ogonyok” along with the magazine itself. There are a number of sites, blogs, pages in the social. networks dedicated to the visual history of specific places - cities, states. Most are American. This is understandable, in America there were more cameras, more pictures were taken, they were preserved in the best condition.
One wheel motorcycle (invented by Italian M. Goventosa de Udine). Maximum speed: 150 kilometers per hour. The Nationaal Archief of the Netherlands
There are a couple of resources claiming global hegemony, but one of them is exclusively about city landscapes, and the second seems to me, as its potential user, so ugly and uncomfortable that I want to close it immediately. There is little content in them, few people know about them (one exists for 3 years and the second is slightly less). It may seem that I gloat without having done anything myself. It is not, I am glad that they exist. I have the opportunity to learn from someone else's experience. I am very grateful for such things.
Mccord museum
The foregoing has convinced me that the niche is free and there is room for development, while the interest in visual anthropology is immense. And we (I'm not the only one) started developing. More precisely, not immediately. At first I, like most new ones, collected a bunch of rakes, spent a lot of time on the extra.
Bobsleighing at Ste. Agathe, QC, 1911. Notman photographic Archives - McCord Museum
At the moment, everything looks like this.
The project will be presented in the form of a resource and a mobile application, allowing (I repeat) to get acquainted with the visual history of the world through old and archival photos. The period covered is from the 1820s, when Niepce took the oldest of the surviving photos, and up to minus 15 years from now (one of the rules — uploaded photos should be over 15 years old - to be removed from the present).
Boy playing with a radio-controlled toy bus. Almelo, The Netherlands, 1957. The Nationaal Archief of the Netherlands
We began to integrate photo archives of various countries into a convenient navigation system - both large institutional (national archives and libraries, museums ...), both private and amateur. Combining content from different sources occurs through tags - temporary, geolocation and thematic (key words). Thus, we get a tool that allows you to carry out accurate and detailed search. As for one of the types of tags, and for two or three of them simultaneously - they are synchronized.
Lieutenant Kirk Booth of the US Signals Corps being lifted at Camp Devens, Ayer, Massachusetts. American Unofficial Collection of World War I Photographs, compiled 1917 - 1918. The US National Archives
The mobile application will give all the delights of a geolocation resource - the ability to watch content with reference to the current location and time, leave routes and explore them. What is called, augmented reality.
We take the first content from large archives (they provide us with this content, they show great interest). Already, without a prototype, we have collected more than 100k photos. In comparison with the total volume, this, of course, is not enough. But for the start it is not bad - we have something to offer to the first users.
Biplane over mountains, circa 1930s, Seattle Municipal Archives
Copyright
We are a UGC-resource (users generated content) - the content is generated by the users themselves). Thus, it will be licensed by them - under Creative Commons. The rightholders and their representatives themselves determine which rights they can use to use their photos - only viewing, use for research and educational purposes, for commercial purposes, and so on. Uploading photos, they complement the picture of the world and, in principle, leave their visible mark on history. We boldly hope that the project will be of interest to a wide audience, as it will be able to provide material on various fields and areas of knowledge. This is an encyclopedic resource. We are planning to launch the beta version for May-June.
Jess Dixon in his flying C. 1940. State Library and Archives of Florida
I tried to describe everything in general and, of course, missed something. I would be happy to feedback and questions. If you want to learn more about the project and support it, you can do it at Kickstarter.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/139663/
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