Data storytelling

Over the years, I've been gathering photographs, fragments of inspiration from books, exhibitions, and even city streets about data visualisation. These artifacts remind me that data has always been more than numbers.

Exploring CO₂ and GDP. My project from a data visualisation course

During a visit to the British Library, I found myself photographing Florence Nightingale's famous polar area chart. That elegant rose diagram that visualized mortality causes during the Crimean War. Nightingale wielded her visualization to advocate for sanitation reforms that would save thousands of lives. Her work proved that visualization can be revolutionary.

Another trip to London, I stumbled upon another piece of data visualization history while walking through Soho. There stands a replica of the Broad Street pump. The site where physician John Snow's legendary cholera map changed public health forever. His 1854 visualization didn't just display data; it revealed the invisible pattern that contaminated water was killing people. Two moments in time, both showing me that the visualizations don't just inform, they transform.

The stories behind the numbers

These historical encounters led me deeper into understanding how data shapes, and is shaped by the world around us. Caroline Criado Perez's Invisible Women became another crucial piece in my collection, opening my eyes to how gender gaps are often baked into the datasets we rely on, with serious consequences for half the population. The book didn't just present statistics; it revealed how the absence of data can be as powerful as its presence.

It compelled me to take a course on gender and data, where I learned not just about statistical inequalities, but about the responsibility that comes with gatherign data. Every decision about what to include or exclude in a visualization carries weight. It was a reminder that visualization is never neutral.

All of these insights, photographs, and inspirations flow into my own work. Recently, for a course by Federica Fragapane I draw a visualization exploring CO₂ consumption in relation to GDP, examining the trends that emerge when we measure economic growth against environmental impact.

The visualization asks uncomfortable questions: What does progress cost us? How do we represent responsibility? How can we make the invisible visible? Like Nightingale's roses or Snow's dot map, it aims to reveal patterns that might otherwise remain hidden in spreadsheets.

The practice of seeing

Collecting these curiosities has become more than a hobby. It's how I train my eye to see not just data, but the stories it tells. Context matters as much as accuracy, the most powerful visualizations often challenge rather than confirm our assumptions.