Wiki Unseen was created to help the world visualize the notable people of color whose stories can be read on Wikipedia, but whose likeness could not be found on Wikipedia for different reasons. Some had no photographic records, while others had pictures that could only be found behind paywalls, not freely available. Maybe you are asking yourself: “Why do pictures matter so much?”, to which I will respond with a fact: Wikipedia articles with images receive more traffic compared to those without images. Therefore More pictures = More visibility.Literally.
To help close what we call “visual knowledge gaps”, we worked with three artists, from three different regions, to redraw history—one portrait at a time. We created a landing page that worked as an art gallery, with the final portraits, gifs of each artist’s process, and information about these notable people. You can see their faces and know their stories on Wiki Unseen.
