Mapping Atrocity

“I’m an architect, and I now increasingly refer to myself as a journalist as well” said Alison Killing, speaking virtually at the University at Buffalo Wednesday night. As the first architect to win a Pulitzer, this label isn’t unfounded. Her talk, Investigating Xinjiang’s Network of Detention Camps, focused on the methods she and her co-awardees developed for investigating human rights abuses perpetuated by the Chinese state against Turkic Muslims. The research, published on BuzzFeed, used satellite imagery and analytical techniques familiar to architectural practice to locate and identify almost 300 camps in the province of Xinjiang. “I brought a lot of experience to the table in this because of my architectural background, [and] how I used mapping and imagery to [previously] work on migration,” said Killing.

Questions around the transmission, censorship, and authenticity of information were at the heart of the matter from the very beginning. Censored satellite imagery on Baidu was paired against uncensored images on other platforms. Contemporary images were compa…