Monday, July 18, 2005 | Permalink
Paul B. Anderson maintains a huge collection of 317 educational-quality historical map projections. They range from the familiar to the prosaic to the bizarre to the marvelous.
Maps are such fascinating creatures. For something that tries to capture accurately a portion of reality, it must resort to distortions, obfuscation and ambiguity. Or as Mark Monmonier would put it, the process involves lies and liars. They are glorified as a tool of an Enlightened humanity, helping to increase knowledge for the benefit of man. But they are also vilified as a tool of empires and oppressors, used to subjugate the powerless and the poor. In any case, Paul B. Anderson has given us much to contemplate.
Labels: archives, cartography
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