Peeking at Charts - Introduction

"Peek" - why peek? Aren't exhibitions all about the "Pictures" at the Exhibition? The charts selected here provide a totally different "picture" to consider when reviewing group photography exhibits. "Group" exhibits as selected here generally include work by more than 10 photographers - many include dozens of photographers - some hundreds.

Group exhibits by definition provide a thematic overview - broadly of an entire collection, or less grandly just a significant collector's collection. Broadest of all, and most famous of all photography exhibits, is Edward Steichen's "Family of Man" at MoMA in 1955. The first of a genre one might call "World" exhibits - subsequently imitated - often intended to travel to venues world-wide. Themes may be historic eras - even arbitrary eras - such as 60s photography, 70s photography, 20th century photography. Or, more narrowly women photographers, Latinx photography, or Japanese photography.

By charting, we're basically looking at the comparative demographics of the photographers included. The charts rank photographers listing at the top the one whose first museum exhibition was the earliest (known to the database at the time of the chart). Progressing downward are those photographers whose first museum exhibition came later. Often, the photographers at the bottom of a chart are those for whom this exhibit represents their first known (sometimes only known) exhibition. One may thus observe what exhibitions followed this first one for a given photographer - and consider what, if any, role this exhibit might have played in furthering a photographer's career.

Hover over the Dots

The color coded dots each represents a year in which that photographer's work was included in one or more museum exhibits. Blue if during his/her lifetime, red if posthumous, purple for those whose life dates we don't know. The "popup" presented when hovering over a single dot presents limited additional information including - how many other (sometimes more than one) exhibits the photographer was in that year. The popups also include the total numbers of museum collections and total number of museum exhibits known to photographydatabase for each photographer.

The clustering of the dots' colors informs at a glance the relative proportion of photographers living versus posthumous have been selected for a given exhibit - often a mix, but occasionally all living, or all posthumous. The density of dots provides a good sense of just how frequently a photographer's work has been exhibited - the dots represent both group exhibits as well as one-person exhibits. The distribution of dots also suggests periods - lifetime, posthumous, sometimes continuously - a photographer's work has been shown. Gaps in the continuity of exhibits might to some extent be related to sampling (periods the database hasn't covered as thoroughly), but the rates of exhibits included over time is reasonably proportionaltely represented as can be observed on this chart. The high water mark for now is 2024 for which 287 exhibitions - each linked to at least one photographer - have been collated. Documentation is both retrospective and on-going - additional records are added daily.