Shraddha Ramani, William Villalongo

Printing Black America: Du Bois’ Data Portraits in the 21st Century is a collaborative print portfolio that uses W.E.B. Du Bois’ original data portraits as a springboard for the critical possibilities found at the intersection of art and social science to render portraits of Black life in the 21st century. Villalongo and Ramani will create a new visual archive of data portraits across the U.S., using a range of printmaking techniques and contemporary data visualization methods in collaboration with Island Press and five other publishing print shops: GraphicStudio, Powerhouse Arts, Highpoint Editions, Mullowney Printing Company, and Paulson Fontaine Press. The official release of Printing Black America: Du Bois’s Data Portraits in the 21st Century by William Villalongo and Shraddha Ramani is anticipated for early spring 2026.

Island Press is publishing a folio of five prints entitled Employment, one of six portfolios that are part of this monumental collaborative portfolio. The project in its entirety debuted in the exhibition Data Consciousness: Reframing Blackness in Contemporary Print at Print Center New York. The exhibition, curated by Tiffany E. Barber, is on view in New York from September 18-December 13, 2025. An accompanying catalog is forthcoming and the exhibition will tour over the next two years. Pre-order exhibition catalog HERE.