Thursday, September 25, 2008

Daft Punk Is Playing At My House


Here is a map to my house. Just get out at Union Station, past the SEC, a couple of blocks, then Ker-Pow! You're there. Watch out for that giant four in the road. The city hasn't figured out how to remove it in the 132 years since this map was published.

Svetlana Alpers once said in the Art of Describing -stop me if you've heard this one- that the Dutch loved and painted maps because it revealed a greater surface to view. She also said that the Dutch treatment of the landscape was borne out of this mapping desire. Makes sense right? You can see for miles in Dutch paintings!

In addition to the obvious graphic beauty of maps, I like to locate myself and my friends in them. Further, I like to see where I am, but in the past. Kind of contextualizing my place I suppose. Maybe next time I'll show you a map to my studio.

The point of all of this is to say that the Library of Congress has a ton of digitized historical maps for your perusal.

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