Visualizing Data
I’m hoping to use the consolidated dataset to showcase a multilayered map/visualization that includes location, photographer, date, and keywords. Visualization will primarily be done through Tableau.
Location
The most fundamental visualization will be to geographically place the photographs on an interactive map. As I have photographs from different organizations with different geographic definitions, I will also need to superimpose the dataset onto the regional divisions defined by WHO. Furthermore, basic number of photographs for each of these regions should be presented in the visualization. My initial attempt at mapping the data suggests that there’s still a need to manually define coordinates for locations that Tableau does not recognize. For example, the entry “Tongnae, Republic of Korea” refers to a district in the city of Busan, and uses the old transliteration for what is now written as Dongnae-gu.
Location of the photographs, most importantly, demonstrates the type of people the UN saw as the “faces” of the “problem” of disability. Where are the majority of photographs being taken? What types of people – ethnicities and otherwise – are being depicted? A preliminary visualization of the dataset suggests that most of the photographs were from Latin America, Africa, and Asia, and I hope this visualization can illuminate this narrative.[1]
[1] Even with pictures taken in the US, subjects skew heavily to minorities.
Photographer
As an added layer to the geographic map, I would like the visualize photographer data. Heat maps and distribution maps are particularly enlightening and will be incorporated, as they show whether photographers had certain preferences for regions and topics. Using the WHO’s archival fonds, which lists commissioned photographers by subject, the visualization will also be able to filter photographers by specifically defined areas and focuses. Individual photographer names can be clicked on and organized based on region, subject, and the number of photographs taken. The names of photographers will give more contextual information about those at the forefront of creating historical, visual, and social narrative on the notion of “disability.”
Date and Keyword
The dates for the photographs form another distinct visualization. The data on the dates on which the photographs were taken can showcase the general ebbs and flows of public interest in disability – is there an increase in these pictures right after the Second World War, with the influx of injured veterans and civilians? Following major UN conventions, namely the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and The Declaration on the Rights of Disabled Persons, adopted by the General Assembly on 9 December 1975? Or perhaps after years of awareness, like the 1981 International Year of Disabled Persons (IYDP) and the 1983-1993 International Decade of Disabled Persons? How is the visual language of these photographs different for each era? Is there something visually distinct in how “the disabled” are depicted between these eras? I am hoping to visualize this temporal data through a simple graph indicating the number of photographs in defined historical periods, and by keyword. I defined these periods roughly by decade: Immediate Postwar (1945-1970), 1970-1979, 1980s and the IYDP, 1990-1999, and MDGs and SDGs (2000-Present).
The frequency and prevalence of certain language and keywords adds another layer to the visualization of dates. Which terms are popular over time? One of the more interesting things the visualization can show is the change in context of the terms used. For more recent search results for “cripple” and “retard,” the now-pejorative and offensive terms are used as adjectives or verbs, in reference not to people, but to natural disasters. These particular photographs actually do not depict disability – they show up in the search results because the accompanying captions describe things such as “crippling food production” and “retarding the response to an outbreak of cholera.” Also interesting is determining whether the language of the captions give agency to its subjects. Are the photographs’ disabled subjects described as “victims”? This data visualization would fit well in the Google Ngram chart format.
Concluding Thoughts
Of course, we can’t assume that the photos on the UN and WHO archives online are representative of all the photographs the organizations took in the past seven decades. However, they are a record of what these organization deemed important or relevant enough to merit earlier digitization.