History

It all began in Detroit…

Our pilot series features the city of Detroit on the 50th anniversary of the rebellion that devastated the Motor City. Working in partnership with Detroit Public TV and cultural and educational institutions, we reached hundreds of thousands of Detroiters. We selected over 100 families to come in and share photo albums that spanned generations, and numerous global origins, to reveal the story of a frontier town that became one of the greatest cities in the nation and captured the imagination of the world. The series will air locally on Detroit Public TV and nationally on public television in 2018.

Family Pictures USA emerged out of Digital Diaspora Family Reunion LLC (DDFR), a transmedia community engagement project which has built and refined a community photo sharing model that uses photography, film, live events, social media, and storytelling to expand on family histories. DDFR has held live events in cities across the USA and around the globe. To date, we’ve interviewed over 2,500 people and gathered in excess of 30,000 images. We’ve shared our content through social media, television, articles, newspapers, and radio, receiving over 70 million impressions across these platforms.