Geography and Vision: Seeing, Imagining and Representing the World

by Denis E. Cosgrove

Geography and Vision is a series of personal reflections by leading cultural geographer, Denis Cosgrove, on the complex connections between seeing, imagining and representing the world geographically.  Ranging historically from the sixteenth century to the present day, the essays include reflections upon discovery and the role of imagination in giving it meaning; colonisation and sixteenth century gardening; the shaping of American landscapes; wilderness, imperial mappings and masculinity; urban cartography and utopian visions; conceptions of the Pacific; the cartography of John Ruskin; and the imaginative grip of the Equator. Extensively illustrated, this engaging work reveals the richness and complexity of the geographical imagination as expressed over the past five centuries.

 

 

Genres: Geography, Nonfiction, Academic

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2008

Reviews

[Pete · Rating 3 out of 5]

Can be paired w/ Goodwin’s Professional Vision article to talk about expertise and the constitution of social objects. The chapter on the Pacific is a good case study in how a space comes to be constituted historically as a unified entity and object of political action. The chapter on Measures of America shows clearly the way that ideas about natural order were imported and transformed in the context of North American colonialism, informed by a different landscape aesthetic.

[Andrew]

The techniques of phenomenology are applied to the world of geography, and Denis Cosgrove produces a thought-provoking, lucid exposition of the link between human vision and the geographic idea. Some of his ideas are a bit silly (the four elements as represented in maps of the Equator, some of the more extreme manifestations of critical cartography that he presents), but others are deep geographic wisdom. Strongly recommended for people who think about places and what they look like.