Skift Take
Cartographic excellence can sometimes come second to visual storytelling.
"Maps and memories are bound together; a little as songs and love affairs are," writes Adam Gopnik in the preface to newly-released picture book Mapping Manhattan. "The map is a stronger version of the trip than a video might be; it is almost a stronger version of the trip than the trip is. I look at the subway map of New York, see the dull line of numbers – 33, 42, 51, 59 – and they fill you at once with memory. Maps, especially schematic ones, are places where memories go not to die, or be pinned, but to live forever."
Gopnik, a staff writer at the New Yorker magazine, was called on to wax lyrical about the joys of maps by his intern.
Becky Cooper, a 24-year-old cartographer and writer, had impressed him with her long-running creative side project, where she asked New Yorkers – and visitors – to map their own versions of Manhattan. She took to the streets, distributing 3,000 copies of a hand-printed outline of the island and encouraged participants to "
