What do we really see when we look at a map? In issue 7923 we explore how photography both documents and distorts the world, revealing the slippery boundary between representation and reality. Inspired by Lewis Carroll’s imaginary 1:1 map, Borges’ allegory of decay, and Baudrillard’s prophetic vision of the hyperreal, this issue asks: where does the map end and the territory begin?⁠
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Featuring Zofia Rydet’s exhaustive portrait of Poland, Edmund Clark and Crofton Black’s forensic mapping of military spending and Elsa Leydier’s eco-feminist deconstruction of the photographic gaze, Maps confronts the impossibility of total understanding in a world of fragments. As Black puts it: “How do you know the parts if you can't know the whole?”⁠
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We also look forward to, for example, coverage of the 2024 Daegu Photo Biennale’s post-anthropocentric vision. In a world where Google’s cameras map every street and satellite images stand in for truth, Maps invites you to question not only what you see, but who decides what’s visible.⁠