April 15 - 23, 2008

You Are Here
Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination
Katherine Harmon
Softcover, 2004
10 cards

I became quite interested in maps and the newest issue of my collage zine, la colle, took maps on as a theme. This book was lent to me by Amanda in my quest to learn more about maps. It offers a wonderful collection of essays by thoughtful writers (Denis Wood and Stephen S. Hall) while also including a range of images of maps by cartographers, artists and others. Maps in literature, particularly children's literature, loom large throughout the book, my favorite is the end quote from Roald Dahl's The BFG.

Lewis Carroll quote
-8-9 Bedolina petroglyph at Valcamonica, 2500 BCE, one of the oldest known maps
-10- mapping making us human
-11 gambol
-own dialect
-"These are maps of the imagination, as all maps are, only more so.
-"three-years-olds are born cartographers
-15 I Mercator by Stephen S. Hall
"We all travel with many maps, neatly folded and tucked away in the glove compartment of memory- some of them communal and some of them universal..."
-private maps
-personal atlas
-16 sentimental documents
-Robert E. Lee
-reader and the map
-"What the map fails to supply, the human mind (or human yearning) sometimes has the power to conjure."
-"the mood of the map-reader colors the map itself. The ability to conjure, the willingness to fill in the blanks, the urgency with which one needs to know- all contribute to what the map becomes in the hands of the inspired imaginer: an instrument of destiny."
-"It is hard to look at a map without sensing, in our bones, private hopes and secret fears about change."
-17 "Out of one territory, one map, can bloom a thousand geographies."
-change- ways of seeing the world
-"fate maps"
-18 wooden puzzle of the United States
-19 "...We need some secure oasis or order, even if only a memory (or a fiction), as a home port for our various explorations, our attempts to make sense of the unknown."
-"'home' which appears on page one of every private atlas"
-19 exploration
-look at it long enough
-"all the things we still do not know"
-24 Paula Scher's map
-38 Chukchi drawing, Siberia, 19th century
"map lays out paths to dreamed destinations...uses notations that are collectively understood to guide others in their dreams and prevent them from becoming lost."
-42-43 Adolf Wolfli
-46 Howard Finster
-53 Geographical Guide to a Woman's Heart, 1960 (Sanctuary of Silence, Just Friends Lane, River of True Communication)
-54-55 Ernest Dudley Chase, A Pictorial Map of Loveland, 1943
-74 Oldenburg
-104 The Maps of Boylan Heights by Denis Wood
-"We mapped everything we could figure out how to map."
-108-109 The American Road
-110
-111 Michigan
-114-115 stone maps
-120-121 William Wegman's Vacationland, 2003 (utterly exquisite and fabulous)
-130 Memory Map by Katie Davis
"Some days, what's missing is more vivid than what is."
-132 What's Up? South! http://www.odt.org/ alternative views of the world
-"It takes many points of view to see the truth."
-133
-135 (who knew the Futurists had a cookbook?)
-136 Ed Ruscha
-142 Ellsworth Kelly
-147 Common Ground Apple Map
-149 R. L. Stevenson, Treasure Island
"I am told there are people who do not care for maps, and I find it hard to believe."
-173 Simon Patterson, The Great Bear
-176-177 Mark Bennett- maps settings of sit-coms
-192 R. Dahl, The BFG: "That's why they always put two blank pages at the back of the atlas. They're for new countries. You're meant to fill them in."