COILED SPIRES and RIVER BENDS
Digital Photography
Maps of our surroundings take landforms of varying shape and present them on a flat surface. How does this change how we perceive the land we travel on? What happens when those forms of flat land we call maps are presented in new ways?
Tension in the paper allows it to hold it's shape and defy gravity as the coil reaches above. Like the tower of Babylon, the spire creates a temporary balance that we foresee falling. Writing and language is essential to map reading, and the skill to read maps requires a certain kind of language. With symbols used to represent physical landscapes and features, as well as man-made paths, locations and imaginary borders, those symbols are representations and pictographs of the real thing.
Map Curl: River Bend 8, Center Spire 1, River Bend 4, Center Spire 4, Riverbend 1, Center Roll, 2023. Digital Photographs.
Give a map to someone who is unfamiliar and they are unlikely to understand the references and markings, let alone the directions they represent. Even today many people are growing up without the knowledge of how to navigate by map. The information we put on maps of paper has a unique way of informing us of our location, as well as our past, while paving a path forward for new destinations.
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