Case Study: Women’s March Chicago goes viral and preserves history with PhotoShelter for Brands

How Women’s March Chicago Went Viral and Made History

Women’s March Chicago, led by visual storytelling lead Sarah Matheson, faced the challenge of documenting a historic turnout of 300,000 people across eight city blocks. With a team of more than 50 photographers and videographers, they needed to be first on social media, create images with lasting impact, and preserve a sprawling archive of more than 30,000 photos for future use.

They adopted a lightning-fast creative workflow and used Libris to tag and organize assets, sharing 1,500 images across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram in five hours to control the narrative and become the nation’s top-trending march. The organized archive now enables curation and continued storytelling—such as collaborations with photo historians for International Women’s Day—turning raw coverage into lasting, discoverable impact.

Women’s March Chicago

Sarah Matheson

Photographer