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I thought that the pairing of the two readings, Betsy Wyeth’s World is an Island in Maine and Introduction: iconography and landscape, offered up a lot to think about regarding the island’s “natural” and “unnatural” landscape. When reading about the construction of buildings on the island and how Betsy saw the landscape as a “blank canvas,” it made me think of our in class conversations on authenticity. Although we never really defined the exact nature of authenticity, it is still interesting to see how much of the islands current image was constructed by the Wyeths. I think there are a lot of similarities between Allen Island and the national park example that Daniels and Cosgrove bring up in regards to the island’s “authenticity.” The two write, “The quintessential modern experience of this new ‘book of nature’ is the stroll through the scenic wonders of a national park with a plastic earphone that responds to electronic triggers embedded at strategic locations along the path” (Daniels and Cosgrove, 6). The unnatural being placed within the natural realm takes away from how natural a space is, but I wonder whether or not this is important to feeling in touch with a particular landscape. As they state earlier in the essay, “The ‘higher landscape’ depended upon a humble submission of men to nature… and the application of the greatest skill and imagination in its representation” (Daniels and Cosgrove, 5). While the Wyeths didn’t necessarily submit to the powers of nature, they did use their creative skills and imagination to create their place, a powerful and meaningful thing to construct. After reading the two pieces, Allen Island seems to represent the blending of the natural world with people’s ability to creatively change landscape, and because they were effective in this “blending,” questioning the authenticity of the island is less important.

The Daniels and Cosgrove article connected Andrew and Betsy Wyeth for me. The line, “A landscape is a cultural image” (Daniels & Cosgrove,1) shows that both Wyeth’s are interested in creating cultural images. However, Betsy uses the physical landscape as her medium while Andrew uses the canvas. Both seem to have ideas not only about the physical landscapes and the larger historical significance that landscape holds. This means that their own cultural understandings are embedded in their work. While this allows them to create evocative images of landscape, for Betsy, it physicalizes her cultural understanding of the landscape, in this case, nature, the Mid-Maine coast and Allen and Benner Island themselves. While humans have a long history of viewing paintings critically, we do not have a history of looking at the cultural implications of landscape as someone’s vision. This gives Betsy and her vision power because she is modifying and creating a piece of art that is not looked at as art or construction as much. She is able to present her vision of natural beauty which is counterintuitive to our conception of nature. On the other hand, there are few places in nature that have never been touched or effected by humans. This means that her work calls into question how we conceive and perceive nature by, purposefully or inadvertently, showing the subjective nature of the natural world.

This reminded me of our space v. place discussion as well as the reading that argued that place is culture. Although maps are usually seen as unchanging and concrete, because place is so entangled with our culture and therefore our worldview, these biases and assumptions come out in the portrayal of our world. Much like we have been talking about Betsy and her desire to present the island in a certain way, maps, too, are meant to convey a certain message about the place being mapped. While the map of Maine may look like an absolute and unchanging visual description of a space, the cartographer’s decision on what to color and how they construct the map in other ways show how representing space and place are directly effected by where we are from. Borders themselves are social constructions, which also shows how the essence of a map is culturally influenced. Maps also have a myriad of uses which affects how different cartographers map what they see.

The four maps that we were given have stark differences. The map of Maine not only has major roads, but also shows the topography of Maine, which gives some natural sense what Maine looks like. However, in the map of the islands, the coast of Maine is largely untouched, and the islands are the only detailed part of that map. The map of Monhegan has no roads or labels, and is a more artistic rendition that still gives a sense of place. The town center plans are geared toward just that, so the maps are organized in a way that would seem to help contractors get a sense of how the center will look like. Because maps are generally seen as concrete representations of our world, it is easy to think of them as cultureless entities that are as concrete as the laws of physics. However, cartographers are greatly affected by the space and place that they live or grew up in, which affects how they create their visions of a space or landscape.

Harley talks about how maps should not be accepted as true and how”scientific maps are a product of… norms and values of the order of social tradition.” Although I believe this is true in some sense (borders and boundaries, although set with set physical boundaries such as mountain ranges, or rivers, are man made and have a cultural history behind them), but I think it is hard to argue that maps using satellite images of the world and land are not true. Because I am enrolled in GIS this semester, I know there are many ways to portray maps and that flat maps are hardly ever perfectly accurate/proportional, but the advancement of technology has allowed maps to be more accurate than they ever have been before.  I believe maps are accepted as true for this reason, which is the reason I was surprised when Harley stated that this acceptance “… has led to a tendency to look down on maps of the past, (and) regard maps of early cultures as inferior to European maps.” In my opinion, other maps that didn’t have access to the technology that we have today wont be as accurate. While reading this article, I found myself thinking back to google maps and how there are street view options for most of the world and wondering how a map could get more accurate or be considered as “more true” than that.

“Deconstruction urges us to read between the lines of the map—’in the margins of the text’—and through its tropes to discover the silences and contradictions that challenge the apparent honesty of the image” (3). We have had many class discussions where we discuss different trends of representation and how its consumption becomes concrete in the belief systems of those consuming. In other words, if an artist paints a scene of Maine lobstering, but it is done in a studio with props, it is clearly embodying a level of artifice. However, when this painting/piece of art is put out into the world, those viewing the painting have no way of detecting this artifice. This portrayal of lobstering is believed to be a realistic representation of what lobstering actually is, even though this is a false notion. J.B. Harley’s point in his piece “Deconstructing the Map” is that this idea is especially relevant with the creation of maps. Harley’s postmodern view exposes the influence of power, and more importantly, knowledge over the creation of maps. Harley references Foucault: “the key revelation has been the omnipresence of power in all knowledge, even though that power is invisible or implied, including the particular knowledge encoded in maps and atlases” (3). Western cartography has falsely affirmed objection, reality, truth and accuracy with the creation of maps. When looking at the maps provided for this class, I am led to ask certain questions that would go deeper than the surface of this map. Who was given the privilege of making the map of downtown Camden, and why were they chosen over others? Why is it that certain parts of this map are included over others? What cultural entities are excluded from this map and why? This reading leads one to dig deeper when thinking about the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. Maps are much more than a means to figure out where one is going.

When reading Harley’s Deconstructing the Map, I was most intrigued by the third section of his essay, the argument on maps and the exercise of power. While reading, I actually found myself disagreeing with, or at least questioning, a lot of what he was saying. For example, on page 12 Harley argues that maps encourage the normalization and standardization of sense of place, but I think that maps normalize a more general geographic space. While I agree that maps do simplify the Earth’s geography to its most basic form, I question Harley’s claim that they “invite no exploration” (13). This seems to contradict what he says about the rhetoric produced by different symbols, lines, and decorations on maps. By saying that these “anonymized maps” contribute to conformity throughout the world, is Harley encouraging cartographers to interpret space for people? If so, that is the exact problem that he cites early in his essay, that cartographers intentionally (or unintentionally) use their positions of power to influence their audience. It’s a fine line that he straddles, and an issue that I don’t know has an answer. Again, I agree with Harley that maps are very basic in their nature and provide little information on the character of certain spaces, but on the other hand I would argue that this affords individuals the opportunity to discover the meaning of those spaces for themselves. That being said, the authoritarian nature that Deconstructing the Map explains at the very end of the essay is yet another factor to consider when looking at a map’s effect on space and place. While Harley makes a compelling argument on a map’s influence on the conformity of space, I think the issue is much more two sided than what he writes.