Table of Contents
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1. Sources of Photographs
1.1. How did the sources of these photography collections change over time and what were the motivations of those who contributed to these collections?
This is a stacked bar chart that shows the sources of photographs acquired by the CMOA according to the date (years between 1965 and 2016). The different colors indicate which source that group of photographs originated from: museum purchase, organization donation, or private donation.
In order to properly investigate photography as historical sources, one must look into the sources of these photographs to potentially answer the question of why they were given to the museum. In total, the majority of the photographs in the collection are from organization donations. The bulk of photographs were acquired by CMOA starting from 1974, corresponding to the CMOA’s tripling in size during this period with the addition of multiple new galleries (“History” 2020). By allocating more physical space to showcase its artwork and photographs, CMOA paved the way for more photographs to be acquired from different sources, thereby increasing its scale of impact through an expanded collection. The chart also shows us that the main contributions to the photographs in the CMOA collection peaked between 1982 and 1986 and were from organization donations and private donations. Since 1986, the number of photographs acquired per year has evened out to be generally around less than 100 photographs per year.
1.2. Further breakdown: Who were the top private and organization donors?
A more detailed breakdown of the composition of the three different source groupings that contributed to the photography collection gives insight into possible motivations of those sources and CMOA itself in acquiring these photographs. This chart shows the top seven sources within each source grouping (and four for museum purchase since there were only four types of museum purchases). As an overview, most of the photographs were given by the library, the next major contributions were from gifts, and the smallest contributions were from funds.
It is unsurprising that the bulk of photographs (over a thousand) were donated by the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh and other entities associated with the library because they are institutions related to the CMOA. Since the CMOA was originally housed in the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh1, it is likely that many photographs were originally housed in the Library and there was a process over a couple years to transfer all the photographs from the Library to CMOA.
Upon further investigation into the gifts subsections, it is apparent that the main contributor to the private donation source grouping is Edith Swank Long, who is a relative of Luke Swank, a famous American photographer who was based in Pittsburgh (“Luke Swank” 2021). Other photographs are gifts are from the artists themselves, but most appear to be gifts from relatively unknown wealthy individuals (such as Mrs. Sally Marshall and George H. Ebbs) who had some connection with Pittsburgh. These docents likely had a genuine interest in spreading their appreciation for art and supporting Pittsburgh institutions, and thus were motivated to contribute their collections to the CMOA. The docents made the effort to donate the photographs because they saw value in them, and the CMOA accepted these donations for the same reason — thus indicating the significance of these photographs in their contribution to the CMOA’s mission.
2. Photography Across the Eras
2.1. When were these photographs in the CMOA collection taken?
From this histogram, we can see that the photographs the CMOA acquired were taken between the 1800s and modern day. Fewer photographs are from the 1800s, reflecting the fact that practical photography was not invented until 1826 by the French inventor Joseph Nicéphore Niépce (Hirsch 2007). This chart also reflects the trend that photography did not become widespread until the 20th century when new developments were made in camera technology that made it more accessible to the public. There appears to be a peak in the number of photographs taken in the 1950s where the count is more than two times the next highest peak (1930s), requiring further investigation into this specific decade (presented in the next section).
2.2. Further breakdown: What was the significance of the photographs taken in the 1950s?
Since the previous chart revealed a distinct increase in the number of photographs taken in the 1950s, it is necessary to further examine the composition of this subset of photographs. The above stacked bar allows you to see information regarding the different photographs taken this decade (grouped by distinct title name) when you hover over the different chunks.
A large chunk of these photographs in the 1950s decade were taken by W. Eugene Smith — the first couple chunks (reading left to right) are large series of photographs with the titles: “Pittsburgh: Town Meeting,” “Pittsburgh Neighborhoods,” “Industry,” “Pittsburgh: City Views,” “Churches,” “Street Fair.” Thus, Smith’s photographs reveal an intimate picture of everyday life in Pittsburgh in this era. By collecting these series of photographs, the CMOA places a special focus on the city that it is located in. With the ordinary subject matter of these photographs, the CMOA also furthers its ability to educate viewers by providing more of a historical lens rather than an avant-garde lens.
Other photographs in this decade are similarly themed — such photographs like “Portrait: Man Reading Newspaper on Stoop” by Regina Fisher and “Event: Graduation at University of Pittsburgh” by Clyde Hare also provide the same type of deep insight into a different time in Pittsburgh. Compared to the later expansion of subject content to places outside of Pittsburgh, this group of photographs that focuses on Pittsburgh in the 1950s showcases the intention of the CMOA to give an accurate representation of historical life in Pittsburgh.
2.3. Further breakdown: What were the themes of the photographs in different centuries?
Since there are thousands of photographs, it is impossible to directly investigate the content of each photograph. We thus chose to analyze the theme of the photographs by the most descriptive variable in the dataset — the titles of the photographs. Using Python’s ‘wordcloud’ package, we created a word cloud to analyze and summarize the text. The size of the words are scaled to the frequency by which they appear in all the titles of the photographs. The colors are for easier viewing, but do not indicate anything otherwise. We also decided to investigate whether the themes of the photographs changed over different centuries. Since there are much fewer photographs in the 1800s and 2000s as compared to the 1900s, the scales of word frequency are very different across centuries and should be taken with a grain of salt.
In the 1800s word cloud, ‘“johnstown” is a prevalent term, referring to Johnstown the city that is located 56 miles east of Pittsburgh. Many of the photographs in this century are visual documentations of the catastrophic Johnstown Flood of 1889, causing other terms like “flood” and “ruin” to show up in the word cloud. Other words and phrases like “man,” “woman,” “street looking” show the ordinary subject content of these photographs.
In the 1900s word cloud, “pittsburgh” becomes the most frequent term to show up. “Neighborhood,” “industry,” and “carnegie library” reveal that the central focus of this major subset of photos is to showcase everyday life in Pittsburgh. A deeper investigations shows that the “portrait” photographs are also of common people in everyday situations, as these full titles are ones such as “Group Portrait: Workers with Turbines,” “Group Portrait: Drivers in Front of Old Market Street and Herron Avenue Trolley,” etc.
In the 2000s, it should be noted that words like “le,” “quai”, “de,” stand out. These are French words and reflect the expansion of subject content to international areas. The “barragan house” is located in Mexico, and its photographer was Luisa Lambri, a female Italian photographer who focuses on architecture and abstraction. The term “portrait” also stands out, but it is interesting to note that the portraits of this era are not of everyday people, but rather are of an avant-garde nature. For example, two such portrait are “Self Portrait as the Devil on the Occasion of my Fortieth Birthday” by Duane Michaels and “Nude Self-Portrait #1” by Peter Hujar.
Through this analysis, it is apparent that the earlier photographs of the 19th and 20th centuries are more for historical documentation purposes, whereas the 2000s expanded into more artistic forms of photography as well as photography with more geographically and ethnically diverse backgrounds. Therefore, the CMOA completes its mission by giving both a historical representation of America (though concentrated in Pittsburgh) and striving to expand its boundaries through diversification and the addition of contemporary photographs.
2.4. Further breakdown: What did photographs in different decades in the 20th century show and is there a trend?
Through this breakdown of photographs from each decade, it is apparent that the CMOA collects photographs that serve to give a window into American history. Up to the 1960s, most of the photographs showcase the impact of major events in American history on specifically the people of Pittsburgh, but the photographs taken from the 1960s to 1990s that were collected by the CMOA expanded this scope of subject matter to other states like California, New Mexico, and other countries like Iceland and England. Furthermore, whereas most of the photographers in the early decades had some connection to Pittsburgh, the later photographers whose work was collected were more diverse and from other states and countries. In doing so, the CMOA is able to achieve its goal of educating the public on different events in both American history and showcasing pieces of life elsewhere in the world — while simultaneously serving as a historical cornerstone for the city of Pittsburgh.
3. Photographer Backgrounds
3.1. Who are the top photographers in the CMOA collection?
In order to better understand the intentions of the CMOA, we also need to investigate the photographers whose work was collected by the CMOA. This chart reveals the photographers who had the most photographs in the entire collection.
The photographer who had the most photographs showcased in CMOA is W. Eugene Smith, born in Wichita, Kansas, in 1918 (“W. Eugene Smith” 2021). As evident from preceding graphs, his photographs make up a large proportion of photographs taken in the 1950s, and showcase an intimate view into ordinary Pittsburgh life during that era.
The second known photographer with the most photographs was Luke Swank, born in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, in 1890 (“Luke Swank” 2021). Swank was known for his photography works in the 1930s of steel mill works. Pittsburgh, PA was known as one of the largest steel manufacturing cities in the world during this time and his works aptly documented this time in history. In 1937, he opened his own studio in downtown Pittsburgh, where he would work on capturing images of Pennsylvania steel mills.
The third top photographer was Clyde Hare, born in Bloomington, Indiana, in 1927 (“Hare, Clyde” 2021). His first works in photography were with the Navy as he served in the final years of World War II. After his time in the military, Hare moved to Pittsburgh where he wanted to help document the city’s urban renewal in 1950. His photographs showcase the expansions of the new suburbs in the North and South side of the city.
A large number of photographs are taken by unknown Americans, and it is crucial to investigate the subjects of these photographs as well. A deeper dive reveals that despite this lack of information, the CMOA sticks to the theme of wanting to preserve the history of America in the early 20th century and the developments in the local Pittsburgh area. For example, some of the pieces with the artist named “unknown american” are titled “Documentation of Western Pennsylvania Penitentiary,” “View of the Allegheny River Looking Downstream,” “Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,” and “War Activities: Parade, Veterans Coming Home from World War I.”
The smaller rectangles in the chart show that the CMOA also collects singular photographs from photographs, so an investigation of these photographs is also essential. In looking at the titles of these photographs, it is apparent that many of the singular photographs are used to capture the history of Western Pennsylvania. It is quite evident that the CMOA strives to honor and preserve the roots of this specific area in the early 20th century. However, it does at times also expand into a national scope, as it documents the World Wars and Great Depression in the early 1900s.
3.2. What are the nationalities of the photographers and what does it reveal about the diversity of the collection?
This map shows the distribution of birthplaces of the photographers whose work is included in the CMOA’s photography department. These photographers are multi-continental, although their birthplaces are mostly concentrated in the United States of America and its east coast. When zoomed into the Northeast USA, the map shows that the birthplaces of photographers are concentrated in four major cities: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (33 photographers), New York City, New York (26 photographers), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (18 photographers), and Bloomington, Indiana (14 photographers). The fact that the most common birthplace of the photographers is Pittsburgh is no surprise, as the CMOA is located in Pittsburgh. This further supports the argument that while the CMOA is meant to show artwork from a diverse set of places (and it does do so by featuring photographs from those born in other countries), it is also meant to specifically showcase the work of photographers local to the city that it is based in.
Furthermore, it is apparent from this map that the majority of the photographs in this dataset was taken by American photographers and other photographers who were from first-world countries, as many photographers were also from Europe. Very few photographers are from South America, Africa, or Asia. As such, there is a limited diversity of photographers, as most of them in the collection are white men from Western society. The small number of these international photographers indicates that the CMOA is not as intent in diversifying the geographic background of their photographs’ subject content as they are in showcasing aspects of American (specifically Pittsburgh) history.
Note: while gender was not a variable in this dataset, we did notice that the extreme majority of photographs in this dataset were male by looking at the photographer names. This is not a surprise since photography itself is a heavily male-dominated field. However, while women did start to practice digital photography in order to seek new job opportunities and fight against the patriarchy (Lukacs 2020), this photography collection by the CMOA fails to reflect this trend.
4. Conclusion
“What is the significance of the photographs that the CMOA chooses to include in its collection and what does that reveal about the CMOA’s motivations?”
The photography collection is contributed to by docents who genuinely care about spreading art and educating the public through the donation of photographic materials that they have access to. The CMOA also has a deep history in Pittsburgh, as the bulk of photographs are donated by the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, the original location that the CMOA was housed in at the time of its creation.
The CMOA appears to have added photographs consistently from different decades, with a peak in the number of photographs taken during the 1950s. In investigating the 1950s photographs, we discovered that the bulk of photographs contained subject content relating to ordinary life in Pittsburgh by photographers who had some personal association with Pittsburgh. Furthermore, in a more detailed breakdown of photograph subject content by century, most of the 1800s and 1900s photographs were historical documentations of Pittsburgh and its events. However, it is interesting to note that the subject content seemed to expand into other states and international territories by the 2000s.
An investigation of the top photographer backgrounds show that most of the photographs in the CMOA collection are by photographers who were born in or have lived in Pittsburgh. Even the photographs taken by the “unknown” photographers contained subject content relating to Pittsburgh and other major events in America. A deeper look into where the photographers were born shows that the mass majority of photographers are from Pittsburgh and in general the East Coast of the United States. Some photographers are from other states in the U.S. and some are from European countries, but there are very few photographers from non-Western countries. Furthermore, there are very few female photographers in this collection.
All in all, the CMOA photography collection appears to concentrate most on documenting historical events in Pittsburgh. While it does eventually seem to expand into avant-garde content and international subject content in the most recent decades, it appears from the data that the CMOA focuses most on educating the public on the history of Pittsburgh. While this may not capture the broader events in international history or contain a diverse collection in terms of both subject content and photographer backgrounds, the CMOA does complete its mission by providing critical insight into the history of Pittsburgh that can serve to educate those who view its photography collection.
