MEAP In the Classroom: Mapping Street Photography

The Photo Jack collection, held by the Arab Image Foundation (Lebanon) comes from the Studio Photo Jack, and includes different photographic practices ranging from photo surprise in public space to reportage from private events. The images show the diversity of northern Lebanon and its communities across religious, ethnic, cultural and class lines.

Exploring digital methods with available data can help students recognize this diversity in different ways. Consider mapping the collection to recognize geographic differences or using text analysis from the subject terms to assess the different themes. The text analysis points to the prevalence of fashion in how street photography is understood and described.

Using Available Software

These examples rely on MEAP collection data spreadsheets. Students used Tableau Public to geotag and map the Photo Jack Collection. However, you could also use Google My Maps (requires a Google Account) to achieve the same result. Students also used Voyant Tools to create the word cloud.

Can we identify trends?

The primary goal of this assignment is to use these visualizations to revisit the collection and consider how these street images reflect cultural and religious life in Lebanon. Ask your students to search the collection based on the terms that stand out most in the word cloud. What do they see if they search for women’s fashion? What about children’s fashions? Does it challenge expectations of how women dress in Lebanon? Consider exploring collection items based on the map as well. Can students identify different trends from Northern Lebanon or Southern Lebanon?

How do you represent Place?

The exercise also required data clean up which helps students recognize the challenge of documenting archival collections. In this case, one question to ask through the process of data clean up: how are geographic locations described? By city, by state, by region? Are they all consistent? What if place names have changed during the period represented in the collection? How would you choose to describe those locations?

Collection data is available through IIIF data points, but you can also contact MEAP if you are interested in using collection data in the classroom.