Using photos as data to understand how people live | Anna Rosling Rönnlund | TEDxStockholm

Summary

The Dollar Street project aims to challenge travel stereotypes and socio-economic misconceptions by visualizing the world as a long street, ranging from the poorest to the richest. With over 30,000 photos from 168 families across 37 countries, it provides a detailed look into daily life, showing that similarities often lie in income levels rather than cultural differences. The project seeks to create a visual framework for understanding global socio-economic realities, using photos as data to bridge the gap between countries and promote a more nuanced view of the world's living conditions.

Takeaways

• 🌍 The speaker reflects on childhood envy of classmates' travel stories and the realization that travel snapshots often create a fairytale image of other countries.
• 📸 The idea of using photos not just as memories but as data to understand the socio-economic reality of the world is introduced through the Dollar Street project.
• 🏠 The Dollar Street project visualizes the world as a street where houses represent income levels, aiming to break stereotypes by showing the diversity within and between countries.
• 🌐 The project has documented 168 families across 37 countries, capturing 135 aspects of their homes and daily lives to provide a detailed socio-economic comparison.
• 📈 The speaker emphasizes the importance of understanding the socio-economic framework rather than relying on country stereotypes or averages.
• 📚 The Dollar Street framework aims to provide a more nuanced view of the world by allowing comparisons across different income levels and regions.
• 🔍 Detailed home documentation is conducted, with photographers spending a day in each home to capture photos, fill out questionnaires, and record daily activities.
• 📉 The project reveals a gradual improvement in living conditions as one moves from the poorest to the richest end of the Dollar Street.
• 🔑 The use of photos as data challenges country stereotypes by showing similarities in living conditions across different cultures at similar income levels.
• 🌐 The speaker envisions Dollar Street as a tool to contribute to a global understanding of socio-economic realities without the need for travel.
• 📘 The project is in its early stages, but the speaker shares initial insights that highlight the diversity within countries and the commonalities across income levels worldwide.

Q & A

What was the narrator's childhood experience with travel?

The narrator's family didn't travel much abroad during their childhood, which led to feelings of jealousy when hearing classmates' exciting travel stories.

Why did the narrator's trip to Spain initially excite them?

The narrator was excited because it was their first opportunity to have the same travel experiences as their classmates and to share similar stories.

What health issue did the narrator encounter during their trip to Spain?

The narrator caught a stomach flu during their trip to Spain, which confined them to bed for most of the week.

What realization did the narrator have about travel snapshots?

The narrator realized that even a less-than-ideal trip could produce good snapshots, leading them to question the authenticity of travel stories and the use of photos to create fairy tales about experiences.

What is the purpose of the 'Dollar Street' project?

The 'Dollar Street' project aims to visualize the world's socio-economic reality by comparing living conditions across the income spectrum, using photos as data to break down stereotypes and understand the diversity within and between countries.

How does the 'Dollar Street' project represent income levels?

The project represents income levels by placing households on a long street, with the poorest on the left and the richest on the right, allowing for comparisons of living conditions at different income levels.

What are the categories captured by photographers in each home for the 'Dollar Street' project?

Photographers capture 135 different categories in each home, documenting various aspects of daily life and living conditions through photos and questionnaires.

How many families have been visited for the 'Dollar Street' project as mentioned in the script?

As of the script, 168 families across 37 countries have been visited for the project.

What is an example of a comparison made using the 'Dollar Street' framework?

An example given is comparing the walls of homes tagged by income, showing how they differ across income levels, and how certain household items like toothbrushes are present in varying degrees.

How does the 'Dollar Street' project plan to expand its reach?

The project plans to create an infrastructure where more homes can be contributed, allowing for comparisons across all nations, cities, and suburbs to reveal the diversity within the world.

What is the narrator's vision for the 'Dollar Street' framework in understanding global socio-economic conditions?

The narrator envisions 'Dollar Street' as a visual framework used alongside world maps to provide a more accurate and detailed understanding of the socio-economic reality of the world, using photos as data to reveal patterns and break stereotypes.

Outlines

00:00

🌍 The Power of Snapshots and Challenging Travel Stereotypes

The speaker reminisces about childhood envy of classmates' travel stories and the subsequent realization that travel snapshots often create idealized narratives. Despite a disappointing trip to Spain due to illness, the experience sparked a deeper reflection on how photos can shape perceptions of both our own and foreign cultures. The speaker introduces the Dollar Street project, which aims to use photography not just as a storytelling tool but as a means to understand and compare living conditions worldwide, emphasizing the importance of viewing other countries with the same nuance as our own.

05:01

🏠 The Dollar Street Project: Visualizing Global Living Standards

The Dollar Street project is described as a visual representation of the world's socio-economic spectrum, with 'house numbers' correlating to income levels. The project involves sending photographers worldwide to document homes, capturing 135 different aspects of daily life. The speaker shares insights from 168 families across 37 countries, illustrating how the project reveals the diversity within and between countries. The summary highlights the methodical approach of comparing homes side by side to understand the gradual improvements in living conditions as one moves up the 'Dollar Street,' challenging the stereotype of national homogeneity.

10:03

📈 Breaking Stereotypes with Data-Driven Photography

The speaker discusses the limitations of using country averages and stereotypes to understand living conditions, advocating for a more nuanced approach using the Dollar Street framework. By comparing specific aspects of homes, such as toothbrushing habits and kitchen utensils, the project reveals commonalities across different cultures at similar income levels. The speaker emphasizes the importance of looking beyond national borders to see the true diversity and shared experiences among people globally. The project's vision is to create an infrastructure for contributing homes to the database, allowing for a comprehensive comparison of living conditions worldwide.

Keywords

💡Snapshots

Snapshots refer to photographs taken quickly to capture a moment or scene. In the video, the narrator uses the term to describe the pictures taken during a childhood trip to Spain, which were meant to be shared with friends as evidence of the travel experience. The concept of snapshots is central to the video's theme of how we document and share our lives and experiences.

💡Stereotypes

Stereotypes are widely held but fixed and oversimplified ideas or beliefs about a particular type of person or thing. The video discusses how people often stereotype other countries and cultures based on limited experiences or images, such as photos, rather than understanding the diversity and socio-economic realities within those places.

💡Socio-economic Framework

A socio-economic framework refers to the structure that includes social and economic factors influencing the life and behavior of individuals or communities. The video mentions the need for such a framework to understand living conditions beyond superficial representations, emphasizing the importance of considering socio-economic factors for a more accurate depiction of people's lives.

💡Dollar Street

Dollar Street is a concept introduced in the video, which is a metaphorical street representing a spectrum of income levels from the poorest to the richest, with each 'house number' indicating a household's income level. The project aims to document and compare living conditions across different income levels worldwide, using photography as a data collection tool.

💡Home Documentation

Home documentation is the process of recording and cataloging various aspects of a home and the daily life of its inhabitants. In the context of the video, photographers were sent to document homes across the world, capturing 135 different categories of items and activities, to provide a detailed look at how people live in different economic conditions.

💡Income Levels

Income levels refer to the financial earnings of individuals or households. The video uses income levels as a way to categorize and compare living conditions along the Dollar Street concept. It shows how different income levels affect the types of homes, goods, and daily routines people have.

💡Cultural Diversity

Cultural diversity is the variety of cultural or ethnic backgrounds within a group or society. The video script highlights the importance of recognizing the cultural diversity within and between countries, rather than relying on stereotypes, to better understand and appreciate the differences in living conditions and lifestyles.

💡Comparative Analysis

Comparative analysis is the method of comparing two or more entities to identify similarities and differences. The video describes using comparative analysis to examine the living conditions of different families across the Dollar Street, revealing patterns and the impact of income on lifestyle, rather than national or cultural stereotypes.

💡Photo as Data

Photo as data is the concept of using photographs not just for aesthetic or memory-keeping purposes but as a form of data collection for research and analysis. The Dollar Street project employs this approach by using detailed home photography to gather information on living conditions, which can then be analyzed and compared across different socio-economic contexts.

💡Global Perspective

A global perspective refers to understanding and considering issues with a worldwide viewpoint, taking into account diverse cultures, economies, and societies. The video encourages adopting a global perspective to challenge stereotypes and to appreciate the socio-economic realities of different parts of the world, as depicted through the Dollar Street project.

💡Socio-economic Reality

Socio-economic reality encompasses the actual living conditions, economic status, and social structures of individuals or communities. The video's main theme revolves around revealing the socio-economic reality of people across different income levels by using photography as a means to document and compare their living conditions.

Highlights

The speaker reflects on childhood envy of classmates' travel stories and the realization that travel snapshots often create a fairytale version of reality.

Initiation of the Dollar Street project to visualize the world's socio-economic spectrum as a long street, ranging from the poorest to the richest.

Photographers were sent worldwide to document homes, capturing 135 different aspects of daily life in each household.

Each home visit lasted a day to capture photos, fill out questionnaires, and record video snippets of family activities.

The project has documented 168 families across 37 countries, providing a diverse dataset for comparison.

The use of photos as data challenges stereotypes and allows for a more nuanced understanding of global living conditions.

Comparison of home walls across different income levels reveals the gradual improvement in living conditions.

The project aims to use photos not just for storytelling but as a data source to understand socio-economic realities.

The importance of looking beyond country averages and recognizing the diversity within each country is emphasized.

The Dollar Street framework allows for direct comparisons between homes of different countries and income levels.

The project's vision is to create an infrastructure for contributing homes to enable global comparisons and understanding.

The speaker shares early insights from the 30,000 photos collected, highlighting the socio-economic diversity within the world's population.

The project aims to provide a visual framework for understanding the socio-economic reality of the world, complementing the world map.

The speaker envisions Dollar Street as a tool for learning about the world without the need for travel.

The project challenges the traditional use of photos for fairytale storytelling and instead uses them for data-driven insights.

The importance of capturing and comparing daily activities, such as toothbrushing, to understand cultural and economic differences.

The project's approach to breaking down country stereotypes by comparing homes side by side, revealing similarities based on income rather than nationality.

The speaker's call to action for a more detailed understanding of the world, moving away from stereotypes to a data-driven perspective.

Transcripts

I remember when I was a child my family

didn't travel much abroad and I remember

the feeling after each summer break when

my classmates came back and they had all

these fantastic stories to tell they'd

been at sandy beaches they had been

visiting cool places with camels you

know all that kind of stuff

and I was a little bit jealous I have to

say then suddenly one day my father came

to me and said we were going to go on a

trip and we were going to go to Spain on

a charter and I was so happy finally I

was going to get the same experience as

all the others

I was so excited we went there

unfortunately I caught a stomach flu

which kept me in bed most of the week

but I was happy enough to have some

spare times I could go down to the beach

and take a few snapshots so coming back

to Sweden I could show my snapshots from

Spain and it looked sort of like the

snapshots my friends held in their photo

albums and there I started thinking a

little bit about that so if my crappy

trip could give me as good snapshots as

my friends how were their trip and what

did we really see when we traveled right

so I started thinking about that and

realising sort of that we use these

photos and snapshots to sort of create

these fairy tales happy moments there

are sort of true sort of notes and we

all know if you look at your own country

you know there's a wide diversity

between people you have Rachel poor you

have all these different kinds and you

would never accept someone to stare

you're talk about stereotypes about your

country grouping it all into one country

stereotype but we do that all the time

when it comes to other countries we

group

and people in other countries tend to be

like fairytale like fairytale characters

to us and we think that's fine and sort

of yeah but if we want to understand the

world we need to treat their countries

just like we treat ours so we get the

same level of detail so I remember when

I was at school my teacher used the

world map to explain how people in other

countries live and that it's sort of

okay but you don't really understand the

living conditions what we need is the

socio-economic framework and that is

currently missing but there is a huge

problem we need to use statistics and we

all know what people think about

statistics they hate it usually we use

photos as illustrations to create these

fairytale stories about our lives but

maybe that is not the best way of doing

it what if we could use photos as data

so I decided to start a project called

the dollar Street and imagine the world

as a long street you have the poorest to

the left

the richest to the right and everybody

else live in between something like this

the house numbers represent the income

level you have and where you live you

will find neighbors from all over the

world

the interesting part would be if we

could visit families right and see what

it looks like in different homes because

in each block you will find people from

all different countries all different

regions and all different cultures so I

sent out photographers across the world

to do home documentation and I'm going

to show you a little bit about that what

is a home well a home is the place where

we eat go to the toilet and sleep but we

do quite a lot of other things as well

and these are the categories the

photographer's capture in each and every

home 135 things they capture by photo

every home they visit they spend about a

day so to take all the snapshots to get

the questionnaire filled out about the

household and the family and to take

some video snapshots following the

family and their daily activities they

spend a day there and these are the

families we have currently visited it's

168 families spread across 37 countries

and we can see now we are in the upper

corner of the dollar Street among the

richest and now we move down and see

here are the families so to show you an

example this is the llama family in

Nepal these are the pictures we captured

in their home and here's the wall this

is one of the snapshots from their home

and what we can do then since this wall

is tagged by income we can compare it

with other walls like this and we can

see how walls differ across income we

have the poorest wall to the left and

the richest to the right and we can see

how they look a little bit different and

the gradually improves but not all

things are good to capture by photo some

things works better on video like

activities so I'm going to show you an

example of that toothbrushing we start

at the top

you

so when the photographer asked this

woman where is your toothpaste because

he needed a snapshot of the toothpaste

she pointed at her wall this is not only

her wall it's also her toothpaste so if

we recap of the tooth brushing category

we can see that at the lower end of

Dollar Street you don't have a

toothbrush maybe a steak as you come up

you'll start having toothbrushes and

when you come up to the richest part you

start having one each so now we have an

idea about what we're going to capture

needs all these countries and all these

homes but what we need is to define a

first set of homes so they are

proportional to the world population we

start by doing hundred homes so we look

at the world map we can see fifty-nine

percent the world population are in

China now and the rest of the Asian

countries meaning we need to have 59 of

the homes from Asia then when we look at

the income we can see the income spreads

like this

these are income mountains you can say

and you see how they spread you

transform it into houses you put them on

the street and you can see there's a

huge density in the middle and they're

spread out so to make it easier to

understand we can take an example let's

look at us these are the US homes the

five green ones and that they are five

then means that US is five percent of

the world population more or less this

is the income Mountain of us if we look

at this family

this family is a representative for the

richest 20% in the u.s. group and here's

their home the name is Howard's and we

can go inside and we can see all these

hundred and thirty five functions and we

can see them bar brushing their teeth

and washing their hands and so on but it

doesn't really make sense just looking

at one home it's when we start comparing

we learn things

so we add this woman as well the family

Hadleys they are in the poorest quintile

as the poorest house down here and we

can start comparing so I would suggest

we start by looking in their cutlery

drawer and we would do that we can see

there's a huge difference she stores her

in a green box while the others has like

really luxury box you can see they even

have a small box within the box for the

tiniest the silverware we now see the

two extremes and we always hear about

there's a huge gap between the poor and

the rich and so on and that's true but

looking at the income mounting we see in

the middle we see most people actually

live in the middle so it makes sense to

add one more cutlery drawer so we do

that and we can see that there is a

gradual improvement and we can do that

for other aspects as well looking at the

kitchen sink or the living room we can

see a gradual improvement of course we

can do this for many countries if we do

it for China for instance here three

homes three families we see their house

type we see the sofas they're using and

we see the stoves as you can see there

is a huge variety within a country so

using country averages and is sort of a

stereotypical way of explaining how

people live and we know we've heard many

times that you is is richer than China

and that is true when it comes to

averages but if we put them on top of

each other we can see that the overlap

is quite big so the exciting part here I

think as using the dollar suite

framework to start looking at neighbors

and comparing their so let's go visit

these two families it's the vu and the

Howard and see their kitchen the

standards are sort of the same look at

the play structures identical and the

beds sort of the same of course we can

do this in the other end of China as

well so we go down to this woman we saw

previously and

we look at her neighbor it's a family

from Nigeria so let's see what they have

in common on that income level well it's

the Leung and they are liberal joy they

have the same type of roofs and ceilings

constructed by natural material with

plastics on top the same type of chairs

they store their grains in as exact same

way both are having fish for dinner and

they boil their water on identical

stoves so if we were visiting this

Chinese family seeing that stove I think

we might draw the conclusion that we

learnt something about the Chinese

culture but when you see them next to

each other you sort of realize this

might not be culture maybe this is

rather an income question so by using

photos as data suddenly country

stereotypes fall apart so what we're

planning to do with the doors root

framework is to create an infrastructure

where you can contribute with homes

because we want it to be possible to

compare all nations all cities and even

all suburbs to see the diversity within

the world and it's when we can start

comparing across country borders with

darka see interesting patterns these are

my main photographers and without them

we would have had nothing today

they had been really hard working and

I'm so happy and when I'm looking

through the material they sent me that

now I have more than 30 thousand photos

to go through so it's sort of a task to

bring some order into this but going

through it I've got some first like

insights that I would like to share with

you and remember it's early in the

process working process so it's quite

rough but I think it's worth sharing it

so first of all remember that this is

the world population most people live in

between stop thinking about the poorest

and richest okay imagine that you were

one of the three billion people in the

middle

what would your life look like now maybe

it would look something like this

when you go to bed in the evening you

brush your teeth with the same

toothbrush as the rest of the family

members and you're dreaming about the

day when you don't have to share the

toothbrush with Grandma anymore you go

and lock the door

using the padlock and then the light

might be flickering because the

electricity is unstable sometimes you

have to rely on moonlight if you want to

read in the night you get into the bed

together with the rest of the family

members and at least you're happy you're

not sleeping on the floor your house has

a patchwork roof so if it's raining you

will get wet and cold while in bed with

the rest of the family when you go to

the toilet you're at least happy even

though it's smelly and full of flies

you're happy that you have something

that keeps your privacy some kind of

wall so that you don't have to use the

field or a bush and then you go in and

grab water for repairing for breakfast

you have to walk for a bit and it's

heavy to carry but it's worth it

because you're going to get this dish

the middle one and it's the same dish

you have for all meals a day all meals a

week most of your life and you're

dreaming about a day when your food can

start become something delicious

not only nutritious so by doing this

kind of comparisons look at it we can

start getting a view about how the world

is when it comes to home functions and

we don't even mention the countries here

it's sort of rough segmentations of how

we organize our lives so my vision is

the Dollar Street will become a visual

framework that we use together with

their world map to understand the

socio-economic reality of the world so

by using photos as data we can finally

understand how other people

of without traveling thank you