Cushman in 1953: A Digital Visualization of Photographic Trends

Introduction

This project explore the trends of photographer Charles W. Cushman’s work during 1953. To present this data, visualized his daily photographic activity through a moving line chart. The aim of the project is to apply metadata to reveal patterns in Bushman’s work. The photos he shot in 1953 show the potential of data visualization to make a narrative from raw information.

Sources

For this project, I explored the Charles W. Cushman Photograph Collection from Indiana University . The data set contains metadata for over 15,000 photographs taken from 1938-69. Austin trimmed down the dataset to only feature data from 1953. Each row in the dataset represents an individual photograph. Each column described things such as the photograph’s subject, date, and IU archives number. I decided to focus solely on the day/month/year capture date to present my data. My goal was to show trends throughout the year of 1953 with a moving line chart. My embedded chart can be viewed below.

Process

The original data file, while already largely trimmed down, still needed to be altered to present it. I downloaded the CSV file, brought it into Microsoft Excel, and utilized pivot tables, which make it extremely easy to shift around date and create a customized table. I transformed each day/month/year date into its own, separate column. Additionally I placed the “Cushman Number” data into the “value” section so it would display a photograph count for each date.

Presentation

Immediately, the moving line chart on Flourish was the obvious option to present this data effectively. The line chart allows viewers to notice trends in Bushman’s productivity over 1953 and the motion keeps the viewers engaged. Originally, the pace of the line was fairly slow and took about a minute to complete. I upped the speed to roughly 30 seconds for a full play-through. Clicking on any date on the graph will trace/un-trace the line until that point. I embedded the final visualization by copying and pasting the iframe HTML code provided by Flourish into a “Custom HTML” block on my WordPress site. This allowed the interactive chart to display directly on this page.

Significance

The visualization reveals clear spikes in the amount of photographs Cushman captured i during certain months in 1953. The most notable months were May, September, October, and November. These peaks may suggest sudden bursts of travel or maybe Cushman just really liked the fall.

This projects turns an archival dataset into an interactive story about a photographer’s rhythm and productivity through the transformation of rows of metadata into a time-based visual representation. Such a project shows the ability of digital humanities tools to assist in the interpretation of cultural patterns rather than just quantifying information.