The Poetics & Politics of Picturing the World

May 18, 2013 3:11 PM

The atlas is more than a cartographic genre. It is a way of thinking, of ordering, and experiencing the world... In the age of Google Earth, this online exhibition of maps from the 16th to 20th centuries is meant to stir public interest in the history of the atlas and cartography.
posted by spamandkimchi (13 comments total)

Indeed.
posted by gwint at 3:23 PM on May 18, 2013 [1 favorite]

Also, the atlas book covers are as cool and fascinating as the maps inside!
posted by gwint at 3:26 PM on May 18, 2013

I would like to kiss the person/people who digitized these.
posted by desjardins at 3:27 PM on May 18, 2013 [2 favorites]

Indeed.

Notable that the upside-down map is produced by an Australian/New Zealand company ;)
posted by Jimbob at 3:27 PM on May 18, 2013

Cue clip of the Organization of Cartographers for Social Equality.
posted by ceribus peribus at 3:37 PM on May 18, 2013

Just browsing these maps for a few minutes, I stumbled upon a 1645 map (Blaeu 1645 I) with a curious name that may be interesting to any fellow Chicagoans. "Chilaga."

As a big local history buff, this is so amazing to find. Thank you for posting this!
posted by deathpanels at 3:43 PM on May 18, 2013

I need some alone time. With this website. And some alcohol. And some jazz. You know, to set the mood.
posted by clockbound at 4:27 PM on May 18, 2013 [3 favorites]

Utterly amazing collection.
posted by Emperor SnooKloze at 12:09 AM on May 19, 2013

As with others here, I think, this site is like crack cocaine to me. Thanks so much for posting this!

And I'll take the opportunity to mention Judith Schalansky's exquisite Atlas of Remote Islands (subtitled "Fifty Islands I have not visited and never will"), which I learned of from a short comment here by ITravelMontana last July. So far no one I've showed it to quite understands my love for the book. But I don't think any of them spent many, many hours of their childhoods pouring over maps, either.

Schalansky's book is wonderful because it nicely exemplifies how this kind of love of maps and atlases is all about a weird mix of inquisitiveness and imagination. Maps provide a outline to the unknown, revealing just enough to build imagination upon without spoiling the mystery.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 1:28 AM on May 19, 2013 [1 favorite]

Ohh wow. This is amazing.
posted by desuetude at 10:35 AM on May 19, 2013

Ran across this interview at Books & Ideas that seemed germane.

Interviewer: You coined the expression “battle of the maps” (la bataille des cartes), by which you suggest that depiction of the other, as of oneself, can be a source of conflict as well as cooperation. How much have representations of the world changed since the end of the Cold War? Today, who wields enough authority, legitimacy and power to impose such a representation or discourse? In other words, who today possesses the key to the new collective geography?

Michel Foucher: ...globalization plunges us into representation games that we have no control over. The collective geography operates with no control tower.

posted by spamandkimchi at 6:48 PM on May 19, 2013

great post!
posted by mumimor at 2:49 AM on May 20, 2013

Not sure if this has already been FPP-ed, but came across The History of Cartography; Volumes I, II (& III I think) can be downloaded for free from University of Chicago Press.
posted by spamandkimchi at 7:52 AM on June 3, 2013