BJP 7923 / MAPS

What do we really see when we look at a map? In Maps, the latest issue of British Journal of Photography, we explore how photography both documents and distorts the world, revealing the slippery boundary between representation and reality. Inspired by Lewis Carroll’s imaginary 1:1 map, Borges’ allegory of decay, and Baudrillard’s prophetic vision of the hyperreal, this issue asks: where does the map end and the territory begin?

Featuring Zofia Rydet’s exhaustive portrait of Poland, Edmund Clark and Crofton Black’s forensic mapping of military spending and Elsa Leydier’s eco-feminist deconstruction of the photographic gaze, Maps confronts the impossibility of total understanding in a world of fragments. As Black puts it: “How do you know the parts if you can’t know the whole?”

We also look forward to, for example, coverage of the 2024 Daegu Photo Biennale’s post-anthropocentric vision. In a world where Google’s cameras map every street and satellite images stand in for truth, Maps invites you to question not only what you see, but who decides what’s visible.