The text explores the challenges and methods of research in repressive contexts, through the case of the Woman, Life, Freedom uprisings in Iran. Drawing on a study of post-revolutionary Iran, it discusses the production of empirical knowledge without direct presence, through digital tools and archival practices. Examining images, discourses and acts of revolt, such as unveiling, it analyzes a radical shift in collective values, affects, belongings and the relations between state and society.

Drawing on auto-ethnographically documented experimental visualization practices and in conversation with critical cartography and the debates on diagrammatic reasoning in the arts, this paper argues that visualization should be considered more systematically as a method that bears self-reflexive and epistemic potential within qualitative research processes.