dennislehmann:

“How can one map a human being?”

Although I am not sure where the question came from, I have been asking myself this a lot recently. Undoubtedly it has something to do with a project about love and recollection that I’ve been working on lately, but whether it derives from the literature in my research or from my personal network, I don’t know. It could be something from Calvinos Invisible Cities. It could be from Kjærstads The Seducer. Maybe it is from hiking with a friend who is also geography graduate. Or it could be something M said or wrote. I don’t know, and I still haven’t figured it out.

Becky Cooper, a 25-year-old New Yorker, have done this amazing project called Mapping Manhattan. The idea is almost anoingly simple. She hand-printed hundreds of blank maps of Manhattan, gave them to strangers on the street and asked them to fill them out and send them back to her. The result is a collection of small self-portraits painting not only a picture of the unique individual, but also a picture of the city as a whole. The work was recently published as a small book called ‘A Love (and Sometimes Hate) Story in Maps by 75 New Yorkers’ by Abrams. I am getting one right now and so should you. It’s only twenty dollars!

(via fuckyeahcartography)