The project began with an online question posted on LIFE's website in 2003 and The Digital Journalist: Can photographs create the same historical effect as literature? The question remained on the website for visitors to openly answer to for several weeks.[1] Most responses were in favor of the idea with the exception of a rebuttal from documentary photographer Joshua Haruni who said, "photographs can definitely inspire us, but the written word has the ability to spark the imagination to greater depths than any photograph, whose content is limited to what exists in the frame."[1]