is selected by the mapmaker on the basis of functional and perhaps aesthetic criteria, or because of a specification or convention” (Turnbull 6). Monmonier expresses a wariness when describing distortions resulting from the Mercator projection, which he feels is a “demonstrably bad choice” in projection for any map “not related to navigation” (Mapping it Out 53). As chapter five describes in greater context, the Mercator projection is most useful in sea navigation, wherein a straight line represents the actual compass bearing. This projection, however, “so grossly distorts areas and distances that the poles lie off the map at infinity” (Monmonier, Mapping it Out 48). No other projection, Monmonier feels, has been “so abused in the pursuit of size distortion” (How to Lie with Maps 94).
Maps Constitute Ways of Seeing
Maps are thus context-bound and create meaning through their selectivity, their use of particular cartographic conventions, their imposition of the grid, the expectation that at least some aspects of the landscape are represented, and their use of both iconic and symbolic features. How, then, may the map be defined? For Turnbull, “[m]aps are graphic representations that facilitate a spatial understanding of things, concepts, conditions, processes, or events in the human world. [. . .] [The map is a] graphic representation of the milieu, containing both pictorial (or iconic) and non-pictorial elements” (3). Maps are then partial, selective representations of the world; they are always in flux and respond to their shifting contexts and relations. Their use of lines, colors, and other graphical features are likewise responses to particular social and cultural contexts and “relational engagements” (Harris and Hazen 51). Crampton also views the act of mapping as a relational cultural practice, one that needs to look outside of itself as much as it looks within; in other words, he is interested in the contexts and conditions that allow for different types of cartographic meaning to come into being (52).7 Crampton understands the map not only from the vantage point of its work as an inherently ideological document but also as one that goes on to invite interpretation and various contextualized readings. These contextualized readings may happen outside of the discipline that produced the artifact, and while those disciplinary practices must not go unchecked, the cultural work of the map extends far beyond the site of its production to influence the material worlds and bodies that it represents. Pickles also understands cartographic practice as functioning beyond the production of the artifact itself (an idea supported by Finnegan as well), and as tied to the larger project of understanding how space influences embodied experience. Here, Pickles quotes from Denis Wood when he notes that “the practice of map use is not to send a message, but to bring about a change in the way another person, or group of people, see the world. It is ‘out of their interaction in the social worlds they inhabit that people bring forth cultural products like maps’” (qtd. in Pickles, A History of Spaces 66). One example of a map that has arguably brought about a change in how people see the world is photo 22727.
The Rhetorical Work of NASA Photo AS17–148–22727: The Blue Marble
NASA’s photograph AS17–148–22727, taken during Apollo’s final journey in December of 1972, is an ideal image through which to briefly demonstrate the connections between visual rhetoric and cartographic representation (Figure 1).
Figure 1: NASA Photo AS17–148–22727, 1972. “View of the Earth seen by the Apollo 17 crew traveling toward the moon.” (Courtesy NASA and NSSDC Photo Gallery.)
The photo was taken by the astronauts aboard Apollo’s final flight on December 7, 1972.8 It was released by NASA on December 23, 1972 and was published on the front page of newspapers across the country over the Christmas weekend (Hartwell). The photo decenters Europe and privileges the Southern Hemisphere, thus working against the historically ethnocentric view of the globe that Monmonier has often critiqued (How to Lie). As geographer Denis Cosgrove has described in his study of photo 22727, the image depicts a “perfectly circular earth within a square frame [. . .]. The edges of the floating globe seem to dissolve into the surrounding black, an impression produced by the earth’s atmosphere” (Apollo’s Eye 260). The photo is predominantly composed of brown, white, and blue tones, which serve to “clearly define the landmasses of Africa and the Arabian peninsula, the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans, and the island continent of Antarctica” (260). The image functions as a complex artifact of visual rhetoric. Recognized by many as a widely reproduced, iconic photo, it is also a map of the whole earth and thus an object of cartographic practice. Further, the social and political contexts in which the image was situated when it was first introduced to the public in 1972 can help us understand the power and knowledge dynamics at work in its circulation and thus its rhetorical power as both iconic image and cartographic representation.
The Image as Both Iconic Photo and Cartographic Representation
Photo 22727 fits within the baseline criteria articulated by Hariman and Lucaites for what counts as an iconic image. Reproduced throughout the years in various forms of print and electronic media, the photo of the whole earth is “widely recognized and remembered,” associated with the “historically significant” final flight of Apollo 17, and may be read as “activat[ing] strong emotional identification or response” in its audience (Hariman and Lucaites 27). Introduced during a period of time in which the environmental movement of the United States was just beginning to emerge, the image has become associated with the idea of environmentalism, has been appropriated by environmental groups, and has arguably shaped perceptions of how the earth is imagined within public discourse. Cosgrove helps us understand how the photo works rhetorically both as an iconic image and as a cartographic representation. On the one hand, he says, photo 22727 may be understood primarily as an iconic photo, for “the frequency with which photo 22727 is reproduced in reverse or inverted suggests that its status is iconic rather than cartographic. While it is instantly recognized as an image of the earth, few register its precise geographical contents. Most respond primarily to its cosmographic and elemental qualities” (Apollo’s Eye 261). On the other hand, Cosgrove seems to implicitly understand the image as both iconic photo and object of cartographic practice when he notes that “the image’s geographical, compositional, and tonal qualities give it unusually strong imaginative appeal, aesthetic balance, and formal harmony” (260, emphasis added). Moreover, if we consider Cosgrove’s definition of the practice of mapping, we can see that an iconic, geographic image such as photo 22727 indeed accomplishes cultural work that influences our understanding of the world and shapes the geographic imagination: “to map is in one way or another to take the measure of a world [. . .] in such a way that it may be communicated between people, places or times. The measure of mapping is not restricted to the mathematical; it may equally be spiritual, political or moral” (Cosgrove, “Mapping Meaning” 2). Thus, in moving away from traditional notions of cartography as positing neutral, correct, relational models of the terrain, we can begin to understand how images of the earth like photo 22727 function as mappings that cultivate critical thought or reflection among its viewers. Likewise, Cosgrove understands mapping as a knowledge-making practice that encourages us to step outside of our traditionally held assumptions in order arrive at new imaginings of our world: “Acts of mapping are creative, sometimes anxious, moments of coming to knowledge of the world, and the map is both the spatial embodiment of knowledge and a stimulus to further cognitive engagements” (Cosgrove, “Mapping Meaning” 1). Indeed, interpretations of photo 22727 enable cognitive engagement with the idea of how we understand our world.
Ways of Seeing Photo 22727
Photo 22727 dramatically displays Earth as a singular entity, surreal and lacking the context of broader surroundings; it presents the viewer with the “whole, unshadowed globe floating in the blackness of space and given NASA number AS17–22727” (Cosgrove 257). From the perspective of the photo as a cartographic, rhetorical artifact, we might consider the power of its small scale, which seemingly marks a territory encompassing “the whole of creation”: “In scale, mapping may trace a line or delimit and limn a territory of any length or size, from the whole of creation to its tiniest fragments; notions of shape and area are themselves in
