November 09, 2020

I Love Maps: What's in a place?

By info ilovemaps

Places.

They’re not as simple as just bits of land. In fact, the subject is almost too vast to address in a few hundred words. They are tied in with our lives, our thoughts and our dreams. And not just ours, those of our ancestors and our descendants.

Maps are the way we begin to make some sense of our larger surroundings. How we try to imagine lands outside of our reach. Lands we might like to travel to, and areas of conflict that we might like to avoid. An atlas can be a catalogue of dreams, planning a holiday or excursion may involve spreading a folded map out onto the floor and pouring over the possibilities.

Even though more recently we might use online mapping, paper copies are still popular. For some it is a tangible item that never runs out of batteries that is most practical, what is collected and, in annotations, holds the memories of past holidays in much the same way as the photographs do. There’s something about the map key, the interpretations of meaning and scale, the relating of that to the land that holds the attention, has an interest quite of its own.

Maps can be business tools, but they are also deeply personal. The places depicted on them hold so many memories. Births, family homes, first loves, marriages, holidays…the list goes on. Even the most mundane map can hold places that give rise to a cacophony of recollections.

And that why we love maps.

Pictured: Maps belonging to I Love Maps' social media and web developer.

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