The Wealth of Nothing Community Archive
The Wealth of Nothing: Rural Southern Life through the Lens of William Van Auken Greene is a hand-crafted photography book that features the portraits of everyday people of Horry County taken by a one-armed itinerant photographer during the 1940s and 1950s. I served as one of the project managers on this book, helping students maintain best practices in handling these unique negatives and maintaining records of these photographs.
As a collaboration with the Horry County Museum who houses the collection, part of my role was balancing the student vision with the goals and needs of the community. As such, I developed a photography archive where community members can tag and engage with the photographs. Riffing off the students’ design of the uniquely handcrafted book, I used the textures and font face to create a similarly handcrafted web experience – a truly unique digital archive.