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An intricate woodblock print by Kunisada Utagawa shows
the arrangement of the body's internal organs, their functions orchestrated
by a team of tiny human figures. A poem in the shape of Manhattan
is a litany of descriptions carefully positioned to correspond to
particular neighborhoods. The swirling nation shapes of Julie Mehretu's
abstract painting suggest a jumbled new world order in flux. Each
of these images is a map, according to the beautifully designed
and skillfully edited You Are Here: Personal Geographies and
Other Maps of the Imagination. Beyond the standard AAA or USGS
definitions, author Katharine Harmon has assembled a collection
of highly subjective, interpretive and fanciful artworks intended
to investigate the myriad ways in which we know, understand and
document the world. The result is an eclectic, thought-provoking
meditation on the human impulse to make maps.
Spanning a wide range of periods and places, the book
is organized thematically; individual works are often grouped based
on visual similarity, without regard for cultural or historical
context. On one spread, an Ellsworth Kelly collage accompanies a
stick chart from the Marshall Islands, a three-dimensional map of
ocean patterns and land masses. Both objects feature spare, schematic
lines, but it's little more than a physical resemblance. While the
stick chart is a useful navigational tool, Kelly's collage is an
abstraction based upon a map. It seems irresponsible to throw such
geographically and functionally disparate objects together with
only a few lines of descriptive copy, but on further contemplation,
the pairing actually reveals a basic truth about representation.
For the Marshall Islander, the stick chart is an abstraction that
facilitates ocean navigation; for Kelly, abstraction is a destination
in its own right. Whether in the service of utility or pursued for
its own sake, abstraction, or the ability to let one thing stand
in for another, forms the basis of all communication.
The book is full of these provocative dialogues, and
their richness arises largely out of Harmon's willingness to let
the maps speak for themselves (and to each other). In this sense,
You Are Here is a truly visual book, in which the images
say more than the text. The book's essays seem almost superfluous,
save for the ones that are themselves like maps. Bridget Booher's
"Body Map of My Life," is a catalog of the location, cause
and treatment of all the scars on her body. Dennis Wood's "Two
Maps of Boylan Heights," reveals the geography of class stratification
in a map of jack-o-lanterns. And "The Mental Geography of Appalachian
Trail Hikers" by Roger Sheffer traces a micro-culture fostered
by the impromptu, highly personal maps left at rest stops along
the trail.
While it clearly revels in variety, at times the book's
eclecticism and lack of historical context is frustrating. The caption
accompanying a gorgeous red and gold map of whimsical mountain roads
is maddeningly brief: "Shan map relating to a border dispute
between (British) Burma and China along the Nam Mao river. Artist
and date unknown." Who or what are the Shan? Is the red part
their territory? What do those lima bean shapes signify? For those
of us not up on our Asian history, it's a colorful, mysterious image,
but beyond beauty, we wonder what it's doing here. Fortunately,
these lapses are the exception rather than the rule, and for the
most part, a brief caption is all that is necessary to start mental
wheels spinning off in myriad directions.
For maps and mapping are just as evocative and malleable
as storytelling, painting or any other form of communication. As
in autobiography or self-portraiture, we map to record, to remember
and to fantasize. But the most provocative maps are those that offer
a critique. John Held Jr.'s Map of Americana from 1928
presents a humorous view of prohibition-era commercialism. U.S.
state and city names are replaced by an endless array of gas stations,
"orange drink," hot dogs and Rexall Drugs. The borders
with Mexico and Canada are lined with "Bootleggers" and
the seas are ruled by "Rum Runners." The cartouche is
framed by a cadre of natives and Africans who lift boxes of liquor
under the watchful gaze of conquistadors, businessmen and an eagle
holding an "E pluribus unum" banner. While it would be
a stretch to claim that the map is a prescient critique of global
capitalism, it is a fairly pointed comment on how prohibition and
global economic profits transformed America.
Although closer to coffee table book than serious
study, You Are Here is unique in presenting maps as rich
and expressive documents in their own right. Neither pure image
nor pure text, maps layer language, location, time and sentiment
to communicate a density of information rarely accessible in other
forms. It is this density that makes them endlessly fascinating.
As Harmon states, "We look at these maps, and our minds know
just what to do: take the information and extrapolate from it a
place where they can leap, play, gambol – without…the
body, dragging them down." You Are Here is both a
celebration of finding one's place in the universe and a collection
of alternate worlds in which to get lost.
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