Publisher's Synopsis
Vision and visual imagery have always played a central role in geography and in the shaping of geographical knowledge. Yet, today there is a marked unease in the association between geography and the pictorial. Cultural geography's relationship with pictorial images has tended to subvert their expressive authority, distracting attention from the integrity of the image itself to an expression of truths that lie elsewhere than the surface. "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.
