=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-3152/BD2019_paper7
|storemode=property
|title=Visualizing Biographical Trajectories by Historical Artifacts: A Case Study Based on the Photography Collection of Charles W. Cushman
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3152/BD2019_paper_7.pdf
|volume=Vol-3152
|authors=Eva Mayr,Saminu Salisu,Velitchko A. Filipov,Gúnther Schreder,Roger A. Leite,Silvia Miksch,Florian Windhager
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/bd/MayrSFSLMW19
}}
==Visualizing Biographical Trajectories by Historical Artifacts: A Case Study Based on the Photography Collection of Charles W. Cushman==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3152/BD2019_paper_7.pdf
Visualizing Biographical Trajectories by Historical Artifacts:
A Case Study based on the Photography Collection of Charles W. Cushman
Eva Mayr1 , Saminu Salisu1 , Velitchko A. Filipov2 , Günther Schreder1 ,
Roger A. Leite3 , Silvia Miksch2 , Florian Windhager1
1 Danube University Krems, 2 Vienna University of Technology
1 Dr. Karl Dorrek Str. 30, 3500 Krems, Austria, 2 Favoritenstrasse 9-11/193, 1040 Vienna, Austria
1 firstname.lastname@donau-uni.ac.at, 2 firstname.lastname@tuwien.ac.at, 3 rogeraleite@gmail.com
Abstract
The digitization of cultural archives and historical records is opening up new avenues for biographical research and teaching. On the
one hand, historical ouevres and lifework collections can be newly visualized for different audiences. On the other hand, biographical
trajectories can be represented and analyzed in an unforeseen manner. But how do visualizations of life and work go together?
With this paper we reflect on ways and means how to shed light on the life of artists or other historical actors by the means of
metadata provided by their ouevre. By representing the works of Charles W. Cushman in the PolyCube framework for cultural
collection visualization, we shed light on aspects of his biography in a geo-temporal and categorial-temporal information space. We
discuss how these visual-analytical frames of reference could be combined for their mutual contextualization, and how they can be
hybridized with textual sources to provide a multimodal, narrative framework of biographical knowledge exploration and communication.
Keywords: Information visualization, biographical data, cultural collections, geo-temporal visualization, visualization of dynamic sets,
digital history, digital humanities
1. Introduction et al., 2015; Leskinen et al., 2018; Filipov et al., 2019), but
Oftentimes, historical object collections containing arti- they rarely allow to analyze multiple dimensions in an in-
facts, assets or correspondences of artists, are bequeathed tegrated manner (Schlögl et al., 2019). Going beyond such
to archives or institutions. These corpora can provide re- one-dimensional views, synoptic visualization techniques
searchers with numerous insights into an artist’s life and can provide richer insights into the multi-dimensional en-
work on various levels. However, such rich collections also tangled information spaces of biographies (Windhager et
bring along thorough challenges for researchers in terms of al., 2018c) and combine visualizations of life and work.
knowledge organization and information integration. They In the PolyCube project (Windhager et al., 2016; Wind-
frequently contain large amounts of objects and documents, hager et al., 2018b; Windhager et al., 2020) we develop
and the associated object information constitutes a complex methods to visually explore the multidimensional data of
and multi-dimensional information space. Thrown into this cultural collections (see section 2). In this paper, we present
space, it thus is frequently difficult and time-consuming for a case study based on the photographs of the archive of
biography researchers to develop a macro-analytical un- Charles W. Cushman which illustrate how visualizations of
derstanding. Also, as Sandweiss notes, ”the question is his lifework can complement his biographical information
whether the digitization of images and their new accessi- (section 3). Finally, we discuss the implications of such an
bility over the Internet fundamentally alter[s] the mean- approach for biographical and prosopographical research
ing of the original pictures or whether they instead give us (section 4).
greater access to those original meanings. [...] We must de-
velop new interpretive skills to understand this new visual
medium” (Sandweiss, 2007b, p. 201).
2. PolyCube: Visualizing Cultural Collections
In this paper, we explore two corresponding types of ”dis- The PolyCube project revolves around the question, how
tant viewing”-techniques for cultural collections (Bender, multiple data dimensions (i.e. space, categories, and rela-
2015) and investigate how they can complement tradi- tions over time) can be presented in an integrated visual
tional skills of object-oriented ”close viewing”-approaches manner to support users in gaining a better understanding
to biographical interpretation. Information visualization is of a given collection—a ”more integrated mental model”.1
known to generate ”visual representations of abstract data Due to its relevance, we put specific emphasis on the visual
to amplify cognition (Card et al., 1999, p. 637). They en- integration of time-oriented data. In the cultural heritage
able the interactive exploration of large amounts of data and domain time has been shown to be a crucial data dimension
facilitate the analysis and understanding of various distribu- (Dörk et al., 2017; Windhager et al., 2016), which also re-
tions and patterns within. At the present time, biographical quires specific visual-analytical attention.
databases tend to offer only basic visual representations of Conventional visualizations of cultural collections often-
individual data dimensions. Exemplarily, many interfaces times build on ’coordinated multiple views’ (Windhager et
utilize maps or timelines, which allow to analyze a per-
1
sons’ life events over time or in geographic space (Russo https://donau-uni.ac.at/en/polycube
Copyright © 2019 for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
Figure 1: Geo-time cube representation depicting the Figure 2: Set-time cube representation of a collection’s
spatio-temporal origins of cultural objects. categorial-temporal development.
al., 2019a), for instance combining a geographic map with
pects similarly salient via positional encoding.3 Evalua-
a timeline. These spatially separated representations are
tions confirm that space-time cube visualizations are easy to
reconnected via interaction methods, for instance by tech-
use, are high in user experience (Kristensson et al., 2009),
niques of coordinated highlighting or linking and brushing
and are especially suited for the exploration of multivariate,
(Roberts, 2007). However, user studies comparing coordi-
spatio-temporal patterns (Amini et al., 2014; Kjellin et al.,
nated views on space and time with more integrated spatio-
2010; Mayr et al., 2018).
temporal views show that the latter are superior for the
identification of spatio-temporal patterns in the data (Amini In our implementation (Mayr et al., 2018), users can in-
et al., 2014; Mayr et al., 2018). Against this backdrop, teract with the geographic space-time cube by rotating the
the PolyCube project develops and evaluates spatially in- view, zooming and panning, and selecting individual ob-
tegrated visualizations, which depict multiple data dimen- jects for a close-up preview with details on demand.
sions in one visual representation. In the following we will
present two visualization approaches building on the so- 2.2 Categorial Space-Time Cube
called space-time cube (Hägerstrand, 1970). Space-time In cultural collections, categorization is an important tech-
cubes commonly integrate geographic and temporal data nique used to organize and delineate the parallel existence
dimensions (section 2.1), yet can be extended to integrate of genres, motifs, movements, or topics. Cultural cate-
also categorial and temporal data dimensions (section 2.2). gories or taxonomies thus group artifacts into set-typed
Finally, we discuss how the resulting representations can be ensembles—which also develop over time. The strengths
synthesized to an even higher-dimensional picture (section of space-time cubes in supporting the temporal exploration
2.3). of larger datasets can also be leveraged for non-geographic
data structures (Vrotsou et al., 2010). As such, they offer
2.1 Geographic Space-Time Cube an effective solution to also visualize the dynamics of sets
Various visualization methods have been developed to rep- and their subsets as intuitive visual shapes of time. In a
resent spatial and temporal data aspects in an integrated categorial space-time cube (in short:set-time cube) the data
fashion.2 In the following, we zoom in on geographic plane does not visualize a geographical distribution of data
space-time cube representations (in short geo-time cube), points, but an arrangement of multiple sets chronologically
which merge a map and a timeline in an orthogonal fash- ordered from the earliest at the bottom to the latest at the
ion, to unfold a three-dimensional, cubic space (Gatalsky top (see figure 2).
et al., 2004). This technique thus allows to map the spatio-
To facilitate the interpretation of the temporal development
temporal origins of cultural objects as a three-dimensional
of individual sets, users can activate a ”hull” structure in our
point cloud (Kraak, 2005; Windhager et al., 2018b) and
implementation of a set-time cube, which connects the geo-
enables a direct (gestalt-perceptual) integration of spatial
metrical vertices of each set over time. Missing data at one
and temporal information. Commonly, these point clouds
point in time will show up as gap within this hull structure.
represent historical developments in an upward dynamic,
The shape of this hull allows users to easily trace the tem-
which orders the earliest objects at the bottom and arranges
poral development according to the angle ( ) of sets and
the latest artifacts at the top (see figure 1).
shows basic flow patterns of set dynamics, such as emer-
From a cognitive perspective, geographic space-time cubes gence, growth, diminution, and decline (Windhager et al.,
offer a specifically balanced design, by which temporal 2018b). A user study confirmed this ability to support users
and geographic origin are both mapped to a shared dis- in tracing developments of different categories over time
play space, making temporal and spatial information as- (Salisu et al., 2019).
2
See the work of Kriglstein et al. (2014) for a review of the
3
advantages and disadvantages of different integrated visual repre- Position as a visual variable is known to be the easiest to de-
sentations. code by users (Cleveland and McGill, 1984).
Furthermore, users can interact with the visualization by
(de-)activating the hull, rotating the view, zooming and pan-
ning, highlighting one or two sets, and selecting individual
objects for a preview and details (Salisu et al., 2019).
2.3 PolyCube: Coordinated Space-Time Cubes
Similar to two-dimensional views, three-dimensional rep-
resentations can also be combined to form ”coordinated
space-time cubes”. As a coordinated assembly, multiple
cubes offer a spatially proximate depiction of the tempo-
ral development of cultural collections in geographical and
categorical space-time. To support users in linking these
representations, interaction techniques (such as simultane-
ous temporal or categorical filtering or highlighting in both Figure 3: Space-time path of Charles W. Cushman accord-
cubes) can help to explore parts of a collection in a coordi- ing to one selected biographical text, as visualized with
nated fashion. In the following we will outline, how such GeoTime (Kapler and Wright, 2004)
a visual-analytical environment for object collections can
also be used to shed light on the life of historical actors—
and thus support the investigations of historians and biog- from his images, virtually nothing is known about Charles’
raphers. career and life” (Indiana University, 2017).
It is not only for this blank period of Cushman’s life—but
3. Case Study: Charles W. Cushman also for an unknown and travel-intense segment between
1937 and 1942—that objects contained in his photography
As a use case, we focus on the life and work of Charles collection can fill in rich information and shed light on his
Weever Cushman (1896-1972), who was a well-travelled biography7 —and more general on life in the U.S. that hap-
amateur photographer and U.S. citizen.4 Visitors to the pen to see a massive economic, political and cultural up-
Cushman archive are introduced to his life with a short bi- swing in these times. Figure 3 models these two periods
ography, recollecting essential facts on his background and of missing information as interruptions of Cushman’s bi-
activities.5 This text summarizes the rather sparse informa- ographic pathway. While we also see a need to honestly
tion known about his life, and points out the need for further represent uncertain or missing data in many areas in such
enrichment by itself—a condition which applies for many an explicit fashion (Windhager et al., 2018a), every biog-
historical records of historical actors. rapher firstly has to explore options how to complement
3.1 Biography and enrich sparse data with additional information. Thus
our guiding question is: How can we complement existing
Charles W. Cushman was born in 1896 in the Ameri- biographical data with implicit information or metadata,
can Midwest (Poseyville, IN), studied law and worked for inherent to existing archives of their lifework?
different companies close to Chicago. He was married
Other reflections on Cushman’s life and work (Sandweiss,
twice—in 1924 and 1970—and died on June 8, 1972. Sta-
2007a, 2012) confirm not only periods of missing informa-
tions of his winded life-path led him to work for a railroad
tion, but also add knowledge about a very critical event in
office (1917), in the Navy during World War I (1918, honor-
Cushman’s life: On March 19, 1943, his suicidal wife Jean
ably discharged from reserves in 1921), for Lasalle Exten-
shot two bullets into his head—and one in her own—and
sion University (1922-1928), for a statistics office (1928-
both survived. From this external data point we derive the
1932), and for a brewery company (1932-1937). From
additional question: How did this event influence his travel
1937 until 1942 he was ”not employed [...] and had no
activities and photographs?
permanent residence. Traveled extensively”(Indiana Uni-
versity, 2017). During World War II, he worked at the of- 3.2 The Cushman Collection
fice of the Alien Property Custodian (1942-1944) and at the
The Indiana University—to which Cushman bequeathed
war department in Chicago from 1944 onwards.
his lifework—features a digitized collection of 14.500 of
Figure 3 presents a visualization of all these stations of Cushman’s Kodachrome photographs from 1938 to 1969
Cushman’s space-time path, as extracted from the above- (Indiana University, 2017). In this case study, we have a
mentioned text.6 After World War II, though, the biogra- closer look at a sample of about 2000 photographs taken
phy states that ”with the exception of what may be gleaned between the years of 1938 and 1955, with the aim (1) to
amend our knowledge of his biography in these years and
4
We chose this individual because the collection of his oeuvre (2) to understand how the shooting in 1943 affected his be-
is fully digitized, and well documented with metadata. havior.
5
https://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/
7
cushman/overview/cushmanBio.jsp As Martha Sandweiss (2007b) formulates it: ”Historians
6
Due to the design of the utilized GeoTime package (Kapler more often confront the difficulties of interpreting images with-
and Wright, 2004), this space-time path is read from top to out extensive biographical information on the photographer than
bottom—as opposed to the other representations in this paper, those of interpreting pictures in light of the photographers own
which follow the conventional bottom-up reading direction. readings of them.” (p. 194)
Cushman consistently documented his activities by the
means of a travelogue, listing locations and dates for all
his photographs together with a short content description.
This information has been transcribed for all pictures, and
the resulting catalogue has been further enriched with geo-
coordinates by Miriam Posner (2014) and with informa-
tion on pictures’ subject content according to the Library
of Congress (2010) Thesaurus for Graphic Materials. As
such, each picture has been assigned to one primary and
multiple secondary genres (e.g., ”architectural”, ”identity”,
or ”landscape” photographs).
3.3 Collection Visualization Figure 4: Geographic space-time cube depicting Cush-
To gain a better understanding of Cushman’s photography man’s pictures as indicators of his travel activities from
collection, we use the PolyCube system to visualize the ge- 1938 to 1955 with a close-up of his first wife Jean at Bad-
ographical and categorial patterns of the photographs with water, CA in March 1955.
their temporal developments between 1938 and 1955. We
will first discuss the geo-temporal dispersion of the pho-
tographs as indicator of Cushman’s travel activities, and
emphasize new information which they provide to fill a
good part of both blank periods in figure 3. Then we
will take a closer look at the categorial-temporal develop-
ments within the collection, before we finally demonstrate
how even higher-dimensional questions can be explored by
means of coordinated multiple cubes.
Travel Activities
Figure 4 introduces a geographic space-time cube represen-
tation of Cushman’s photographs between 1938 and 1955.
In this representation, early photographs are shown at the Figure 5: Categorial set-time cube depicting the develop-
bottom (violet) and the latest ones at the top (yellow). The ment of photography genres within the Cushman collection
widely scattered positions of the pictures near the bottom from 1938 to 1955 with a close-up of an identification pho-
document Cushman’s extensive travels through the United tograph of his wife Jean in an arboretum at Lisle, IL in Au-
States between 1938 and 1942. For this period of time, gust 1943.
the online biography just recites Cushman’s own statement
on his application form for Federal Employment: ”Not
employed during this period and had no permanent resi- similar travel activity to the beginning of the visualized
dence. Traveled extensively. Looked after personal inter- period—if not even more: They undertook several road
ests, principal of which was interest in contract of sale of trips, along the Southwest to the West Coast and through
Drewry’s business”(Indiana University, 2017). By contrast, the Midwest. In 1952, the couple moved to San Francisco
the meticulous metadata of his photographs fills in a rich and in several road trips explored the surrounding regions
and detailed pattern of coast-spanning movements, which and national parks, during which Cushman took the picture
reminds the observer of trips recorded by modern satel- of Jean in Badwater, CA (see figure 4, left).
lite navigation. By rotating the cube, digital biographers
can explore these travel patterns from different perspectives Photography Genres
and can see Cushman visiting the West Coast (1938, 1940), Figure 5 depicts a categorial set-time cube representation
the Midwest (1938, 1939, 1940), Florida (1939), and the of the same corpus selection based on the primary genres
East Coast (1939, 1940, 1941). Sandweiss (2012) argues of the photographs. The visualization shows that across all
that these trips ”represented Charless attempt either to take photographic categories, Cushman took the fewest pictures
Jeans mind off her troubles or, quite differently, to give in the year 1943. Their number increased again over the
himself a break from the tensions of daily life together” following years, with an especially high number in 1952—
(p. 126). the year the couple moved over to the west coast.
From 1943 onward, Cushman remains quite stationary With an activated hull structure, the set-time cube makes
within the Chicago region—even after his federal employ- the main subject of Cushman’s pictures visible as they de-
ment in the War Department of the Chicago ordnance dis- velop over time. While he took a wide variety of pho-
trict ended. An obvious explanation could be the shoot- tographs before the shooting, the gaps in 1943 indicate that
ing and his wife’s following hospitalization at a sanitarium he took only ”snapshots” (dark green in figure 5, ”land-
in Oconomowoc, WI (Sandweiss, 2007a), which is docu- scape” (red) and ”identification photographs” (light orange,
mented with pictures in the collection until June 1950. At which also mainly contained plants and buildings) and
the end of 1951, the couple left Chicago and again show did not regain his full variety until 1946. A category of
Figure 6: Combined geo- and set-time cube depicting the development of the genre landscape photographs.
photographs he hardly used after 1942 are ”glamour pho- crafted an extraordinarily complete inner world from the
tographs” (in light blue on the right in figure 5). fragments of life that he found around him, a world defined
Similar to 1943, in the year 1948, a gap within many gen- more in terms of his own experiences than in the service of
res can be observed. Studying the archive’s biography (In- a search for a hidden essence or an unknowable design”
diana University, 2017) and other publications (Sandweiss, (Sandweiss, 2012, p. 212). Additionally, he was wealthy
2007a; Sandweiss, 2012) we could not identify any critical enough to allow for extensive private journeys and used the
events in Cushman’s private or professional life that explain opportunities provided by his travel activities to choose his
this temporal rupture. But the similarity of this pattern to motifs.
the constellation in 1943 suggests, that another important
event could have happened within this period that curbed 4. Discussion
his creative urge—and maybe also influenced his decision With this paper, we explored the potential of a visualization
to take up his travel activities again in 1951. method for time-oriented collection data to enrich the histo-
rians and biographers methods portfolio. Deliberately go-
Space, Time, and Genres
ing beyond one-dimensional data portraits, it provides the
The PolyCube framework also offers a parallel setup of means for an integrated ”distant and close reading” inspec-
”coordinated multiple cubes”, which allows to use the pho- tion of large cultural collections from two time-oriented
tographic genres as filters for the geo- and the set-time macroanalytical perspectives.
cubes to explore more specific questions. To illustrate this
option, we took a closer look at landscape photographs that In a case study on the American amateur photographer
show an initial decline in numbers in 1942 and increase Charles W. Cushman, we showed both how object data can
massively again in 1952 (Figure 6, right). Selecting this fill in periods of lacking biographical knowledge, and more
category we can zoom and filter on this subset of land- specifically, how the development of a collection could be
scape pictures, and explore their spatio-temporal distribu- inspected for consequences of critical life events—on a ge-
tion (Figure 6, left). A large number of landscape pho- ographic and on a categorial level. We also discussed how
tographs was taken at the West Coast especially in 1954 the pictures show no direct connection to Cushman’s pro-
and 1952 as well as in the Middle West in those years. fessional life and rather appear as a resource for further ex-
The amount of landscape photographs during Cushmans ploration and understanding of his private life.
earlier years is linked to his travel activities as well. Do- As with many case studies in the digital humanities realm,
ing the same analysis with other categories, we can deduce we consider the results to indicate a possible general ap-
that Cushman took the largest number of architectural and plication area, while remaining a local exploration until
cityscape photographs during his time in the Chicago area. further notice. Obviously, due to the idiosyncratic data
Though this might not be surprising and evokes the image structures in historical fields of study, the analytical av-
of a contemporary tourist, this analysis points to a simple enues generated in this case study cannot be directly trans-
fact: As Cushman was an amateur photographer the sub- ferred to other archives or other people’s lifework collec-
jects he chose were not dependent on any professional fo- tions. However, due to the wide-spread use of temporal, ge-
cus or on his clients demands, but on his own interests. ”He ographic, and categorial descriptors, we consider the Poly-
Cube framework to provide a relevant macroanalytical ex- documents both from a distant and close viewing perspec-
tension for biographical research. Distant reading or view- tive (Sandweiss, 2007b; Drucker, 2017). Close-up interpre-
ing approaches like the ones discussed in this paper offer tation is well-known to be a multipolar process, where the
dynamic overviews on large archival collections. These meaning of an artifact is constantly co-constructed by histo-
representations again enable users (1) to identify and in- rians, artists, and both their surrounding social and cultural
terpret basic patterns within a lifework collection on an contexts. On the aggregated, macroanalytical level, the dig-
macroanalytical level and (2) to identify objects of inter- ital remediation of photographs can lead to a loss of in-
est for more detailed investigation, e.g. with traditional art- formation in comparison to the original artifact or viewing
historical, formal, or also critical-interpretative means. context, and frequently also to a loss of critical hermeneu-
tical distance (Drucker, 2013). Archives can be fragmen-
4.1 Limitations tary or biased (e.g. based on the specific interest of the
Visualizations obviously depend on digitized content and collector), and they frequently allow only a limited view
can represent only those events of a biography, where cor- on a body of work. Thus also visualizations should be ex-
responding data or documents exist already in a digital for- plored with critical caution when biographical information
mat. Thus, for the purpose of extended biographical re- is deduced, or even inspected for their invisible and un-seen
search, our inspected data selection (from 1938 to 1955) parts (Glinka et al., 2015).
would require a substantial extension—for example, with
4.2 Outlook
information on events which happened before and after our
archival sample. Also information on critical life events Going one step further, biography visualizations (depicting
might have been omitted from the official biography on a person’s direct spatio-temporal trajectory like in figure 3)
purpose—and thus would require additional investigation and lifework visualizations (depicting objects like in fig-
and corroboration. ure 4 and 5) could be beautifully combined to shed light
on each other. Future work on the PolyCube framework
We consider the added value of visual analytical ap- will aim for the simultaneous and consistent visualization
proaches to historical records to generally hinge on a mini- of both types of complex dynamics. In our analysis of the
mum level of data quality and data specifity. Only very few Cushman collection, we found it very useful for our inter-
historical object or lifework collections lend themselves as pretation of his lifework to relate the photographs to events
a completive source for the creation of high resolution por- in Cushman’s life. But at other points, we figured that
traits. For this purpose, only specific artifact collections the lifework collection can provide us with information go-
provide either detailed or consistent enough documentation ing beyond the biographical knowledge—e.g., giving more
in multiple metadata dimensions (such as on time of origin, detailed information on his travel activities or changes in
place of origin, category) for each object. From a gener- Cushman’s photographic interests, which could hint at an-
alization point of view, this is no negligible restriction, as other (yet unknown) critical event in his life.
only modern technologies generate these inscriptions reli-
ably by themselves (e.g., digital photography)—and only We consider such contextually rich and transactional ap-
few artists pay attention to meticulously document the cir- proaches to interpretation to be of relevance in multiple
cumstantial or contextual conditions of their creations. history-oriented knowledge domains. Even ongoing de-
bates with proponents of a ”new criticism”-style focus on
In all other cases, uncertainty and incompleteness of col- objects or ”texts themselves” seem to benefit from the
lection data is a major challenge—and visualization has to emergence of these novel methodological options, as they
find new ways to cope with these standard conditions of help both micro- and macroanalytical sides to redefine and
historiographic data—and the humanities’ knowledge con- recalibrate their positions—including the development of
sistency in general (Windhager et al., 2018a; Windhager et research programs which systematically aim to intertwine
al., 2019b). Some of the main uncertainty types encoun- and mediate the best of both interpretive worlds (Hickman
tered in the Cushman collection include blurry dates of ori- and McIntyre, 2012; Drucker, 2017; Jänicke et al., 2015).
gins (e.g., time periods of many months), missing or im-
precise location (e.g. ”United States”), and photographs In the H2020 project InTaVia (https://intavia.
assigned to no or multiple genres. Techniques which we eu, 2020-2023), we currently develop such visualization
applied to deal with uncertain categorization included a approaches for historical and prosopographical research
”no category”-category, which holds all images without a purposes—to combine, contrast, and compare the biogra-
genre, and to visualize intersections between the genres to phies and lifeworks of multiple persons of interests. Per-
also show more complex affiliations to primary and sec- sons can be linked by objects (like documented by their
ondary genres (Salisu et al., 2019). Many further tech- correspondence or also by group portraits), by events (like
niques to encode temporal, spatial and categorial uncer- meetings or exhibitions), or by other relations (like student-
tainty are available (Windhager et al., 2018a; Windhager teacher or family relationships). We design multiple vi-
et al., 2019b), but designers of visual-analytical systems sualization perspectives—for the representation of geo-
will also be well advised, to find elegant trade-offs between temporal and categorial-temporal patterns as presented in
the wide-spread omission of uncertainty - and the imminent this paper, but also for relations, time and further data
risk of overburdening interfaces with visual complexity. dimensions—to facilitate the analysis and communication
Moreover, caution and special expertise are needed when of data on tangible cultural objects, contextualized by in-
interpreting digital collections of photographs as historical tangible cultural information from biographies. Such a
multi-perspective visualization framework can further be tograph Collection [Online] Available:
enriched with options of close reading of textual biograph- https://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/cushman/index.jsp.
ical accounts and close viewing of objects and their de- S. Jänicke, G. Franzini, M. F. Cheema, and G. Scheuer-
scriptions. (Combinations of) geographical, categorial, re- mann. 2015. On Close and Distant Reading in Digital
lational and temporal visualizations then can mutually re- Humanities: A Survey and Future Challenges.
contextualize a source text and thereby instantiate a mul- T. Kapler and W. Wright. 2004. GeoTime information vi-
timodal, narrative framework of cultural and biographical sualization. In INFOVIS ’04 Proceedings of the IEEE
knowledge exploration and communication. Symposium on Information Visualization, pages 25–32.
A. Kjellin, L. W. Pettersson, S. Seipel, and M. Lind. 2010.
5. Acknowledgements Evaluating 2d and 3d visualizations of spatiotemporal
This research was supported by a grant from the Aus- information. ACM Transactions on Applied Perception
trian Science Fund (FWF), project number P28363-G24, (TAP), 7(3):19.
from the NFB, project number SC16-032, and the Euro- M.-J. Kraak. 2005. Timelines, temporal resolution, tem-
pean Union H2020 research and innovation programme un- poral zoom and time geography. In Proceedings 22nd
der grant agreement No. 101004825. International Cartographic Conference. Citeseer.
S. Kriglstein, M. Pohl, and M. Smuc. 2014. Pep up your
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