About
A collection motivated by larger research questions into visual cultures, representations of tourism, and issues of mobility.
This project emerges from a personal collection that I wanted to make public. During my first real engagement with scholars about it (at the metaLAB’s Beautiful Data II conference), I said I wanted to “barf” the contents of my personal collection online. But, I knew that I had to do something akin to “Barf+.” How/what could I do to add value and context? What did it mean to make a database and create productive metadata? What is at stake in the materiality of these objects as well as their recirculation online today as large scans?
A starting point was that I wanted this NOT to be a Digital Humanities project - which abound today - when an academic scans a collection of things simply because they are interested in them. I wanted to provide the database (metadata, images, and all) to the public in order to recirculate these postcards, but I wanted to connect this database and the iterations here with some of the core questions of my research around issues of tourism in Lebanon. As such, much of the Eddy section builds off of, and from, a chapter of my dissertation where I explore the various flipbooks of Dog River-Harissa-The Casino. Beyond what I develop in words through that text I am trying to elicit an experience in the Eddy (albeit one that might be more accessible to those that know the particular landscape) where one can see/feel the tightness of vision and how this area was cultivated for certain types of practices. I hope through the code, and computational sequencing through fields-of-view, that it illustrates how these postcards were propelled to illustrate a value, worth, and index of certain parts of the country.
While I own these postcards, I do not own the rights. They are offered here for personal and educational purposes. There is no commercial gain from A View from the View and if you download you are responsible for what you do with them. If you are a rights holder and want something taken down, please get in touch.
To view/download/access the full database (as a spreadsheet) go here.
For more information, suggestions, or just to get in touch write me here.
This project was supported with by Critical Media Practices and the History Design Studio at Harvard University. It was also realized through the expertise of Archimedes Digital.