A prototype made with acrylic, wood, masonite, paint, and clock parts.

I made this after W. E. B. Du Bois’s data portrait, “Assessed Valuation of All Taxable Property Owned By Georgia Negroes.” It was created by Du Bois, William Andrew Rogers, and a team of black sociologists-in-training at Atlanta University for the 1900 Paris Exposition as part of a set 29 hand-drawn diagrams called “The Georgia Negro: A Social Study.” Before big data as we now know it, computers, the cloud, printers, and laser cutters. It felt eerie and exhilarating to retrace this work, this collective self-portrait as data.

You can view the other charts and ephemera from Du Bois’s projects at the Paris Exposition at https://blogs.loc.gov/inside_adams/2015/02/du-bois-in-paris-exposition-universelle-1900/

Thanks @protohaven‘s Lizzee Solomon for the instruction and resources and @panopticnerve for introducing me to this aspect of Du Bois.