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In 1900, W.E.B. Du Bois organized a series of infographics on the progress of Black peoples after Emancipation, to be displayed as part of the American Negro Exhibit in the 1900 Paris Exposition world’s fair. Using the still-developing field of data visualization, the American Negro Exhibit worked to upend the conceit of Western superiority and inevitable “progress” of industrialization by rendering in stark relief the dynamic participation of Black peoples in American social and economic life, and their global participation in science, literature, and art.
In Printing Black America, artist William Villalongo and urbanist Shraddha Ramani update and reimagine Du Bois’s infographics. Printing Black America: Du Bois’s Data Portraits in the 21st Century is a fine art print portfolio based on the project of Du Bois and his team for the contemporary moment. Villalongo and Ramani create new images or “data portraits” using a range of printmaking techniques, current data and living projects by Black scholars, social scientists and activists. To achieve this, Villalongo and Ramani worked in collaboration with printmaking studios in various regions of the United States and their communities. This project uses the original data portraits created for the American Negro Exhibit as a springboard for the critical possibilities found at the intersection of art and social science to render portraits of Black life in the 21st century.
Printing Black America is organized as six thematic portfolios published in editions of 20. Each portfolio holds 5 images. The complete project collection includes all 6 thematic portfolios for a total of 30 images.
Printmaking partners on the project are USF Graphicstudio; Powerhouse Arts, Brooklyn; Island Press, Washington University, St. Louis; Highpoint Editions, Minneapolis; Paulson Fontaine Press, Berkeley; and Mullowney Printing Company, Portland, OR.
