Forbes 30 Under 30

PHOTOS FOR THE PEOPLE:

How widening the lens landed this IC alumni on Forbes 30 Under 30.

2020 was a rather indescribable year. In fact, Oxford Dictionary’s famous “word of the year,” was left blank, as, “it became apparent that 2020 was not a year that could neatly be accommodated into one single word.” Where words failed however, pictures and images filled the gaps. As the old adage goes, “a picture is worth a thousand words.” Photos allowed us a privileged window into the lives of others and connected us through shared experiences of isolation, devastation, alongside hope and togetherness. “There was a lot of fear and isolation at the beginning of 2020, but then people came together to protest the injustices that were revealed during the pandemic.” Nour Chamoun ’09 reflects. Her upcoming book, “The Year Time Stopped: The Global Pandemic in Photos,” is a collection of images and stories from the past two years, and is being published with Harper Collins in June 2022. She calls it “a testament to the human spirit, and how it rises above everything that works to bring it down.”

Chamoun was well positioned to document, share, and elevate what could not be articulated with words, throughout these tumultuous two years. The book is just the tip of the iceberg.

Nour Chamoun

The company’s reach, innovative technology, and commitment to authenticity and diversity earned Nour a coveted spot on the esteemed 2020 Forbes 30 Under 30 Media list. The panel of judges, which included media heavy hitters like CNN host Don Lemon and Vox cofounder Melissa Bell, selected an elite 30 who have found success through serving audiences and telling stories that are often overlooked by traditional institutions, and who leverage technology to solve media’s biggest challenges. Nour undoubtedly fit the bill. The child of two documentary filmmakers who dedicated their lives to filming stories of marginalized communities during Lebanon’s Civil War, Nour has always been keenly aware of the importance of visual storytelling and the power of the arts to expose and highlight people and places often overlooked and misrepresented in mainstream media.

Nour pursued her artistic side at IC, where her favorite course was visual arts class, in which she focused on painting. Her love of visual arts drew her to LAU’s graphic design program where she completed her undergraduate degree before moving to New York to pursue a master’s in Design Technology from Parsons School of Design.

For the past five years, her digital photography marketplace and creator hub, Scopio, has tapped into artistic communities across the globe with a goal of creating the world’s largest and most accessible collection of authentic and diverse images that photographers everywhere can contribute to, and any individual, company, or organization can access. Their mission is to connect the world through visual storytelling, which they have been doing quietly and quite successfully for some time. Their digital library currently contains 700,000 + images from 14,000+ creators across 160 countries. “I wanted to do something at the intersection of art, design and technology, as well as something that has social impact. I kept thinking, how am I able to combine design and technology and affect some sort of social change?” Nour relays. This question guided Nour through her studies and later pursuits. As part of her masters, she created a database for Arabic fonts, called Tarkeeb. The typewriter and the computer were originally developed for Latin fonts and English scripts, and Nour saw a huge gap in the number of

different font choices available to the millions of Arabic users online. She wanted to help advance the Arabic language on the internet. Chamoun and her Scopio co-founder, Christina Hawatmeh, began working on the concept in 2015. It was originally called “Protestify.” As two Arab women emboldened by the impact of the Arab Spring and related social movements reverberating around the globe, they noticed a gap between the images and stories that were being shared on the ground, through social media, and what news outlets and organizations were using. documenting these events in real time.”

The idea was to create a Googlesearch type of platform that used AI to search and aggregate social media posts (Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram) of these movements from around the world. The software looked for certain keywords trending among journalists and news organizations and cross-referenced them with images on social media, so they were more accessible and easier to find. It searched for captions, not just hashtags, which broadened the scope and depth of content available. They secured funding from grants, accelerators, and private investors that allowed them to build and grow. However, delivering content in real time for news organizations was, as Chamoun says, “probably one of the hardest things you can do.” Because social media was so new, they essentially had to create cutting-edge technology like natural language processing and machine learning for the platform. It needed a lot of capital, as well as a level of digital fluency that clients just didn’t possess at the time. So, they decided to adapt the platform to become a marketplace that shares photos and stories submitted by a growing community of thousands artists and photographers.

“Social media was a very new way to document what was happening on the ground, so anyone with a smart device could take pictures and share stories.” Chamoun states. “This is the gap we saw. We wanted to use technology to connect news organizations to the people who were “The reason why we pivoted was the technology was very complicated for the clients, and we saw an opportunity to create something that’s not just a stock photo site that sells commercial photography, but instead highlights diverse images that represent every community, every human identity.” Nour emphasizes, “As an Arab woman, I didn’t see myself fairly represented in any visual medium - whether photography, video, illustration, especially in the West. So, I wanted to make sure that our platform did that.”

As they transitioned away from its focus on a tool for news outlets and their community-based platform grew, Protestify became Scopio (which stands for Scope it Out). It operates like a stock company on a basic level - individuals and companies who don’t have access to original, high-quality content, pay a small fee to subscribe to the platform for access to royalty free images for their websites, publications, and social media.

Scopio aims to provide organic images of real people that accurately reflect the world around us. The images found on the website are art – breathtaking, creative,

and honest. Both professional and amateur artists and photographers from across the globe can submit their images, which, if selected, are uploaded to Scopio’s digital library. Images by the people, for the people. Scopio is also a tech company. They use an Artificial Intelligence (AI), developed by the team, to help center the stories that they believe deserve more media attention. The AI processes, tags, and prioritizes the thousands of images that are submitted each day, prioritizing images with diverse people in them and other underrepresented communities and demographics. Their team puts a lot of time and energy into implementing ethical AI practices. Because AI was created by largely white and male dominated tech companies, it’s built around and trained to recognize a database of white men. Scopio is doing things differently. AI helps them stay in line with their mission: highlighting images that are in line with the trends, but also telling stories that might still be “controversial.” “Whether politics or protests, we very much prioritize social movements and identities that are still not very much talked about. Take Valentine’s Day, for example. If a company were to use Scopio to source an image of a young couple for a seasonal marketing campaign, they would find a collection of images very different from the typical Hallmark white male/female couple holding hands. Scorpio’s selection thoughtfully highlights LGBTQ+ love, Black love, love between people with disabilities, love between friends, self-love. Despite one’s perceptions or biases, these images show that love

Nour and her co-founder, Christina Hawatmeh

is love, no matter of your race, sexual preference, gender identity, shape, or size, and they help humanize different identities, experiences and worldviews. It is an incredibly subtle, yet incredibly revolutionary act. Representation matters, and the fact that Scopio is channeling its knowledge and resources to make sure that every human experience is portrayed, is poignant. There’s an old saying: “An enemy is a person whose story you haven’t heard.” If a picture is worth a thousand words, then photos must be a pretty powerful way to spark dialogue and foster cross-cultural understanding. Beyond increasing representation and sharing stories through the images they choose to highlight and share, they also are working to increase access and equality for visual storytellers and creators.

Scopio is free for creators to join. And, they don’t just target professional photographers with high-tech cameras. “It’s really for anyone with a smartphone that takes decent photos and has an interesting story to tell about their community,” Nour emphasizes.

This opens the space up for artists and creators who might not have had access to certain equipment or education, but who have equal talent and crucially, important stories to share.

Contributing photographers get royalties every time their photos are downloaded off the subscription. Furthermore, the Scopio team works to elevate creators’ voices through their podcast and YouTube channel. “We get to know the photographers,” Nour emphasizes. “We do a lot of interviews and get to know their life, their drive and what their story is. We want to highlight their stories through our platform.” They’ve also started an NFT (NonFungible Token) feature. NFTs are types of digital ledgers that represent real-world objects like art, music, and videos, that are bought and sold online. It’s essentially an opportunity for photographers to sell their digital images as “legitimate” art pieces. Because each NFT gets a unique identifying code, it creates a kind of digital scarcity that allows the item to be sold at a higher value. It enables artists to claim ownership over the image as they can track, publicly, who buys and sells their image. Nour explains, “What’s different about NFTs is that photographers get royalties from secondary sales, so they can make recurring revenue from the same artwork every time someone buys it. And because the

idea of NFTs is to create a limited number of editions of the same artwork sold, their art appreciates in value over time. It’s a way to bring artists and photographers into the digital art world and help them monetize their work.” Scopio also creates materials to help creators learn about this opportunity by explaining what NFTs and cryptocurrencies are, and how to set up their digital wallets, and facilitate sales. Apparently, this is the future of the art world.

It has not been an easy journey to achieve the success and accolades Scopio now enjoys. As an Arab female-led company with a small team of nine, they have worked incredibly hard to carve out a space for themselves in the very white, maledominated tech and start-up space. As both a young entrepreneur and woman in tech, Nour says, “I definitely felt that I was tokenized a lot of the time by not being given the same level of trust and capital that my male counterparts are.” in a newly “woke” world. Scopio’s staunch social consciousness was a major factor in their recent success and recognition. “I think we were one of the few, if not the only photography platform that had most of our content on the homepage related to the Black Lives

Failure has been another challenge in Nour’s entrepreneurial journey. But it is also, she believes, the key to success. “The more you fail, the more likely you are to succeed, because the more you are trying things. I’m still getting comfortable with this, but I have to put myself out there and take more risks. If I can fail faster, success will come more easily and be more gratifying,” she illuminates. The Scopio team’s talent, hard work, and dedication to its mission and vision, however, has allowed it to grow, develop, and thrive, particularly

Scopio’s upcoming photo collection

Matter movement when the protests first started in June 2020,” Nour reflects. “We wanted to show our support and amplify these stories to bring mainstream attention to this issue.” Aside from Nour’s Forbes 30 Under 30 feature, her partner Christina was also named a Top Entrepreneur to Follow by NY Finance. Their community and client base is rapidly growing and they currently serve more than 25,000 businesses. Their upcoming book, “The Year Time Stopped: The Global Pandemic in Photos”, features 200 images and stories handpicked from their archives, documenting prevalent themes of isolation, hidden heroes, love and togetherness, and protests that arose during 2020. The first part depicts how people across the globe dealt with the isolation and fear. The second part focuses on how people came together to protest the injustices that were made more apparent during the pandemic - like BLM protests and resurgent Palestinian resistance to occupation and global solidarity (a story Nour is particularly passonate about highlighting). The past two years are marked, not only by immense growth and success for the Scopio team, but also by a poetic return to their roots in sharing stories of social movements. “It reminded me of the important stories that needed to be elevated .

We all have the power to amplify stories. Even if we are without a camera or major social platform, these conversations around different human identities and experiences can start around your dinner table, in the classroom, or at the pub with your friends. Institutions like IC, in particular, have a responsibility to highlight these issues and topics, Nour reminds us. Its photography 101: widening your lens broadens perception and depth.

For more information please visit:

https://scop.io/