Communication is a compromise: words are accessible, but their abstraction erodes specificity; images are localized, but do a poor job of providing context; numbers are exact, but fail to capture humanity.

The series of photos and infographics* below serves to illustrate the implications of these compromises. The movement between images and infographics triggers a conceptual whiplash, creating a harsh juxtaposition between the empathy of images and the precision of numbers. Taken individually, each component obscures something; yet, thedesign ensures that it’s somehow impossible to view both the photograph and its statistics simultaneously. This—the ability to obscure context without detection—is the mechanism of cultural appropriation.

“Contextualize This” seeks to demonstrate the difficulty of avoiding appropriation: it’s increasingly difficult (if not impossible) to see broadly and specifically at once, to navigate seamlessly between the immediate and the surrounding, the local and the global. Even still, we have the obligation to try.

*Note: I took all photos in Quito, Ecuador, July 2015;

Click the infographic text to view my sources