overview
The data I interacted with, ‘cushman_metadata_1966_67.csv’, consisted of a photo collection constructed from 1966 to 1967 by Charles Weever Cushman; ‘cushman_metadata_1966_67.csv’ is metadata from an art collection that connects over thirty years of photo documentation of the United States and some other countries. Cushman is an Indiana University alumnus referred to as an “amateur photographer” by Bradley Cook, a writer for the Indiana University Bloomington Libraries. According to Cook, Cushman gifted his alma mater over “14,500 Kodachrome color slides”. Cushman’s art consists of various locations; this aspect of the data sparked the utmost curiosity. Therefore, I created a visualization of the frequency of Cushman’s work in the States from 1966 to 1967. The research question I use to guide my work is: “In what state did Cushman photograph the most between 1966 and 1967?”.
The data, “Cushman_66.67_data”, is what I am projecting below; this data was created from the original metadata of Cushman’s photography journey from 1966 to 1967. “Cushman_66.67_data” consists of three renamed selected columns from the original data: “State”, “Archive_Num”, and “Year”; the code below follows this data cleanup. The condensed data of location and unique photo ID allowed me to explore where Cushman spent more time photographing during his one-year documentation of the United States.
Code:
Finishing Thoughts:
California was the most frequently photographed state for Cushman during 1966-1967. Cushman’s activity can only tell us so much, but further exploration of time frames spent within the state of California and maybe even data regarding Cushman’s interactions with each state could best help us understand and conclude what Cushman was interested in documenting during this time.
