I made this prototype as part of Jer Thorp’s “Artists in the Archive” course, in which we developed engagements with the US Library of Congress’ open digital resources.

This new search ‘vehicle’ for the Library of Congress’ unfathomably massive photo archive uses the analog of a roadtrip as a search through these collections. As you plot a route on the map, photos from the archive taken along that route are displayed. This vehicle allows serendipitous connections between photos from different times, collections and populations which would otherwise never appear together within a traditional search engine.

Try it live here and on Twitter.

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