Data as photography

Ansel Adams, adapted by Wesley Goatley

“A visualisation is usually looked at – seldom looked into.” – Ansel Adams “The sheer ease with which we can produce a superficial visualisation often leads to creative disaster.” – Ansel Adams “There's nothing worse than a sharp visualisation of a fuzzy concept.” – Ansel Adams “You don't collect a data set, you make it.” – Ansel Adams “There are always two people in every data visualisation: the creator and the viewer.” – Ansel Adams “To make art with data truthfully and effectively is to see beneath the surfaces.” – Ansel Adams “A great data visualisation is a full expression of what one feels about what is being visualised in the deepest sense, and is, thereby, a true expression of what one feels about life in its entirety.” – Ansel Adams “Data visualisation is more than a medium for factual communication of ideas. It is a creative art.” – Ansel Adams “We must remember that a data set can hold just as much as we put into it, and no one has ever approached the full possibilities of the medium.” – Ansel Adams “Data art, as a powerful medium...offers an infinite variety of perception, interpretation and execution.” – Ansel Adams “Twelve significant data points in any one year is a good crop.” – Ansel Adams

The idea that the camera does not lie is as old as photography. It has been untrue for just as long.

The exposure of film or sensor to light may be an objective process, but everything which happens before and after that is malleable and uncertain. There are some interesting parallels with data in that: the same appearance – and assertion – of accurately representing the real world, the same issues of both deliberate and unwitting distortion.

This tweet simply takes some of the things Ansel Adams, the great photographer of American landscapes, has written about photography and adapts them to be about data. It’s neatly done and provides good food for thought.

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