cinema’s mapping impulse questioning visual culture teresa castro

7/29/2019 Cinemas Mapping Impulse Questioning Visual Culture Teresa Castro

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R E F E R E E D P A P E R

Cinemas Mapping Impulse: Questioning Visual Culture

Teresa Castro

Universite de Paris III, Sorbonne Nouvelle, 75231 Paris Cedex 05, France

Email: [email protected]

This paper explores the links between cinema and cartography, focusing on the notion of a mapping impulse. The mapping

impulse is less about the presence of maps in a certain visual landscape and more about the processes that underlie the

understanding of space. In our analysis, we will therefore pay less attention to the symptomatic presence of maps in films,

focusing instead on what we call cartographic shapes: panoramas, atlases and aerial views. The point of the matter is that astrong visual and rhetorical connection between cinema and cartography is not as surprising as it might initially appear.

Keywords: aerial views, atlas, cartographic reason, cinema, film, mapping impulse, panoramas, visual culture

A filmmaker should also be a bit like a land surveyor.(Jean-Marie Straub)

What is the link between cinema and cartography? At firstglance, such an association is not obvious, as the art andscience of mapmaking appears to be quite different from

the art and industry of moving images. Further reflection,however, reveals that on a general level both cinema andcartography are graphic means of creating visual images ofthe world. The coupling of eye and instrument thatdistinguishes cartographys representation of space is inmany ways very similar to cinemas coding and scaling ofthe world. A look at two particular images which serve asvisual epigraphs in the context of this paper should makematters clearer (Figure 1). The first is the title page ofAbraham Orteliuss Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, the firstatlas ever printed, published in Antwerp in 1570. Thesecond is an advertisement for the Charles Urban TradingCompany, dating from 1903 (Figure 2). Charles Urban(18671942) was an important figure in the early British

film industry, as well as the inventor of the Urbanbioscope, a projector so successful that the bioscopebecame a generic term for cinema itself.

It can be argued that Urbans poster merely illustrates thesurvival of a formal motif the atlas frontispiece devoid ofany particular meaning, a happy coincidence in the vibrantuniverse of this turn-of-the-century visual culture. Takingsuch a position would, however, dismiss all too-easily afundamental aspect of early film: the fact that it oftenpresented itself as the modern successor of cartography(Shohat and Stam, 1994). In this particular case, CharlesUrban films seem to be visually promoted as a new form of(cinemato-)graphic atlas, the visual apparatus that for more

than 300 years had effectively created an image of theworld. Atlases, one should recall, constitute a collection of

maps (i.e. images), assembled in relation to an overallscheme that aims for thoroughness and completeness. Inthis sense, they resemble world maps, but unlike them,atlases demand to be browsed and navigated. World mapsoffer totality at a glance: their synoptic view anticipatesmodern-day satellite photographs and invites fleeting,

dreaming looks. Atlases, however, require more carefulscrutiny and the contemplation of details together withmeditation upon the universe they portray. The complete-ness for which they aim is also different from the onepresented by world maps. Atlases constitute a visual archive,the summary of the geographical knowledge of a particulartime. The French historian Christian Jacob refers to them asan apparatus that allows for the conciliation of the wholeand the detail, governed by a cumulative and analyticlogic and lent to a different way of grasping the world,more intellectual and encyclopaedic (Jacob, 1992: 97, mytranslation).

While remaining sensitive to the quite distinct historical

contexts in which these two images were produced, I amtempted to draw a parallel between Orteliuss age ofdiscoveries and the First Era of Globalisation (18801914) that witnessed the invention and development ofcinematography. Seen in this light, its not surprising thatthe Charles Urban Company, whose famous motto wasWe Put the World before You, envisaged itself as a sortof cartographic enterprise, whose aim was to make theworld visually immediate. Tom Gunning, commenting onthe travel genre in early film (and travel films constitute asignificant part of Urbans production), notes that itoccurs within a context of feverish production of views ofthe world, an obsessive labour to process the world as a

series of images (Gunning, 2006: 32). Gunning links thisto the industrial and colonial expansion of the time and to

The Cartographic Journal Vol. 46 No. 1 pp. 915 Cinematic Cartography Special Issue, February 2009# The British Cartographic Society 2009

DOI: 10.1179/000870409X415598


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Martin Heideggers claim that modern western manconceives and grasps the world as image (Heidegger,1977). Obviously, to grasp the world as image is afundamental cartographic problem, as Italian geographerFranco Farinelli has pointed out (Farinelli, 1992, mytranslation). When Gunning concludes that rather thanersatzes, images become our way of possessing the world(Gunning, 2006: p. 32), one cannot help but to think ofmaps and atlases again, so often dedicated to kings,princes and other men of power.

By briefly evocating these two images and the complex

context in which they emerge, I wish to make clear that astrong visual and rhetorical connection between cinema andcartography is not as surprising as it might initially appear.The fact that cartography has played, and still plays, asignificant role in the construction of systems of power/knowledge and that cinema appeared at a moment ofwidespread colonial expansion, makes this link all the morethought provoking. One wonders indeed if early nonfiction film, which brought the whole world within reach(Melies ill-fated Star Film company slogan: le monde aportee du regard), is not traversed by a general mappingimpulse, associated but certainly not limited to theterritorializing impulse of nation-states, different imperial

projects and other scientific and commercial ventures. As anumber of film scholars have pointed out, early travel films

evince a real desire to take possession of the world throughrepresentation. The trip around the world is a commonearly film topic (Costa, 2006), as well as more or less exoticincursions into foreign lands, generally in the shape ofexpedition or ethnographic films whose effective role is tofill the blank spaces in the spectators imagination.However, the affinity between mapping and picturing incinema (picturing being understood here as a form ofgraphically describing) is not restricted to this overtlyrhetorical interpretation, which certainly deserves furtherinvestigation. As a matter of fact, the mapping impulse

would also refer to a particular way of seeing and looking atthe world, a visual regime. In view of all these elements, andbefore discussing in detail a number of examples that willallow us to see how this cartographic appeal translates itselfinto moving images, one fundamental question remains tobe answered: what exactly can we understand by mappingimpulse?

FROM THE MAPPING IMPULSE TO CARTOGRAPHIC

REASONING

The expression the mapping impulse was originally coined

by art historian Svetlana Alpers in her book The Art of Describing (Alpers, 1983). In her study, an exploration of

Figure 1. Title page of Abraham Orteliuss Theatrum OrbisTerrarum (1570)

Figure 2. Advertisement for the Charles Urban Trading Company,1903, Luke McKernan collection

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the seventeenth century Dutch visual culture, the authorconvincingly argues for a connection between painting andthe techniques of cartography. According to Alpers, mapswere the model for this particular visual tradition, whichemphasized the images flat surface and favoured descrip-tion. Despite the criticism concerning her strong contrast

between Dutch and Italian painting, Alpers work wasunanimously praised for its reappraisal of Northern visualculture, and its consideration of other images than thosenormally considered to be art, among which maps are to becounted. Martin Jay subsequently proposed that this art ofdescribing corresponded to a scopic regime of modernity,i.e. an historical model of vision, anticipating the visualexperience produced by the nineteenth-century inventionof photography (Jay, 1988: 15).

But historians of cartography have also used theexpression mapping impulse. The late John Brian Harleyin particular observed that:

There has probably always been a mapping impulse inhuman consciousness, and the mapping experience involving the cognitive mapping of space undoubtedlyexisted long before the physical artefacts we now callmaps. For many centuries maps have been employed asliterary metaphors and tools in analogical thinking.There is thus also a wider history of how concepts andfacts about space have been communicated, and thehistory of the map itself the physical artefact is butone small part of this general history of communicationabout space. (Harley, 1987: 1)

Understood in such a way, the mapping impulse is lessabout the presence of maps in a certain visual landscape andmore about the processes that underlie the understandingof space. In the analysis that follows, we will therefore payless attention to the (symptomatic) presence of maps infilms, focusing instead on what could be called carto-graphic shapes: panoramas, atlases and aerial views. Theseare not, strictly speaking, conventional maps, but they sharewith them a number of important traits, among which onecounts the graphic deployment of a spatial understanding ofthe world. If we understand maps to be graphicrepresentations that facilitate a spatial understanding ofthings, concepts, conditions, processes, or events in thehuman world (Harley and Woodward, 1987: XVI), ourfocus shifts from the object maps to the function spatial understanding, considerably widening our critical

horizons.A third, alternative way to think about this mapping

impulse would be to follow Italian geographer FrancoFarinelli and to question the cartographic metaphors thatrun at the very heart of Western thought (Farinelli, 2003).Could Western reason be cartographic? As David Harveyhas argued, mapping space is a fundamental prerequisitefor the structuring of any kind of knowledge (Harvey,2000: 111112), the epistemology that shapes the field ofcartography reaching well beyond the profession ofmapmaking. Even though Farinellis inquiry is morephilosophical than anthropological, we are tempted todraw a parallel with Jack Goodys arguments, as developed

in The Domestication of the Savage Mind (1977). In hisbook, the English anthropologist focused on the impact of

literacy on human modes of thought. Similarly, one can(and should) wonder about the impact of maps andmapping on our ways of thinking about the world andhow to represent it. In this sense, the notion of acartographic reason concerns at least three differentdimensions: that of a mode of thought attached to the

conventional and unconventional graphical representationsof geographical space; that of a historical phenomenon (i.e.different societies and historical times witness differentcartographic rationalities); and finally, that of an episteme, inMichel Foucaults sense (i.e. as the very condition ofpossibility of discourse).

CARTOGRAPHIC SHAPES: PANORAMAS, ATLASES AND

AERIAL VIEWS

The analysis that follows will focus on the cinematicexpressions of what I have previous called cartographicshapes, i.e. panoramas, atlases and aerial views. Theseconfigurations are in themselves very different: if panoramasmaximize the notion ofpoint view, atlases relate to a way ofassembling images, while aerial views concern a particularangle of view. The examples discussed here are limited tonon-fiction films from the first two decades of cinemashistory; in the cases of panoramas and aerial views, theyconcern a particular event: the First World War.

Panoramas

Panoramic vision responds to a desire to embrace and tocircumscribe space, allowing for the observers eye to seizethe whole of an image. In the Western world, the

development of panoramic vision coincides with the adventof disciplinary societies and the social theory of panopti-cism (Foucault, 1975). Panoramic views had obviouslyexisted long before the Irish-born Robert Barker wasgranted a patent for his invention of panoramas in 1787: anew type of 360u painting, taken from a high vantage pointand allowing a visual survey. However, it was during thenineteenth century that panoramic vision acquired a newstatus, painted panoramas becoming an important visualmedium, whose characteristics often bring to mind somefundamental traits of the cinematographic and filmicapparatus (Griffiths, 2003; Miller, 1996). If some authors,such as Stephen Oettermann, have insisted on the connec-tion between panoramas and a specifically modern,

bourgeois view of the world (Oettermann, 1997)Author:Please supply reference for Oettermann (1997) in thereference list, the visual experience they facilitate can also belinked to cartography (and in particular to topography) andto the notion of a mapping impulse.

Not surprisingly, panoramas or panoramic views areone of the most common entries in film catalogues from theearly period, as if film actively sought to perpetuate thenineteenth century vogue for panoramas and their detailedreproduction of reality. Most of these views are in realitytravelogues punctuated by slow panoramic shots, illustrat-ing what film historian Tom Gunning has called theaesthetic of the view, i.e. a descriptive mode based

on the act of looking and display (Gunning, 1997: 22).Early cinema seems obsessed with capturing places and

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landscapes on film and these views scenes of cities, ruraland natural landscapes, tours of foreign countries, phantomrides portray the world in a seemingly simple manner(portraying being another term often used in early filmcatalogues). The apparent simplicity of these films shouldnot conceal the fact that they represent the careful scaling

and coding of the world through filmic means, namely,horizontal and 360u panoramic shots. The panning gestureis obviously linked to nineteenth century panoramas, to thefeeling of visual control and mastery over space that theyprocured, and to a larger process of spectacularization oflandscape (Oettermann, 1997). While the camera, fixed ona tripod, moves rotationally on an axis, it also guides thespectators eye in journey through space and time. Thecinematic embodiment of these movements takes panora-mic vision and the mapping impulse that pervades it further, as the following examples will show.

In his discussion of French newsreel films from the FirstWorld War, French film historian Laurent Veray remarks

how the sequences dealing with the ruins and thedestruction caused by the conflict are heightened byhorizontal and vertical panoramic shots (Veray, 1995). Afilm entitled Les Allemands sacharnent sur les eglises deFrance (1917) illustrates this point well, documentingthrough 21 pan shots the destruction of religious buildingsin the Oise, the Aisne and the Meuse. According to Veray,such camera movements provide a feeling of spatialcomprehensiveness in line with the cameramens will torender the scale of the disaster. Faced with a multitude ofexamples, it is natural to speculate about the reasons thatmake the panning gesture a recurring movement in suchnewsreels. If the panoramic shot belongs to the basic non-fiction filmic grammar of the time its movement throughspace illustrating the striking visual effects of motionpictures, its relation to a picturesque aesthetic seems outof purpose in the grim context of these desolate landscapes.The reasons behind these pans are most likely the specificdocumentary and propaganda needs of the military institu-tion. On the one hand, these films chart and portray thedestruction of particular places, in a way that wasconsensually considered to be accurate and precise: thepan shot describes. On the other hand, they stress theenemys barbarity, by accentuating the vicarious visualexperience of the mayhem they caused. One could alsoevoke the idiosyncrasies of military vision at this particularmoment in time. Trench warfare was all about visibility and

invisibility, the horizon being the ultimate goal of thestrategist. Panoramic vision, with its promise of a panopticalideal, was used in order to visually neutralize and mapdangerous terrain.

The feeling of spatial comprehensiveness to which Verayrefers finds its ultimate spectacular manifestation in the360u panoramic shot. In the war context, this is one of thefew movements that seem capable of rendering the colossaland unprecedented scale of destruction (the question ofscale being extremely important). Thus, a 360u panoramicshot in 1917 on the hazelnut woods of Verdun emphasizesthe dimension of the events that took place there. Byplacing itself at the heart of that tragic theatre of war, the

cameramen reproduces the visual model that stood atthe heart of architectural and painted panoramas: as the

cameras complete revolution around its axis opens up to anunbounded visual experience, we feel enveloped by theimage. As a way of seeing that predates the invention ofcinema, the panorama was a fundamental geographical tool(Oettermann, 1997): actualized here by the movie camera,it becomes a way of e-motionally mapping the war and its

effects.

Atlases

But the mapping impulse would not be limited to theseparticular camera movements. The Archives de la Planete, aunique collection of films, autochromes and stereoscopicphotographs assembled between 1912 and 1931, bestowedon it a different and ambitious goal: the description andclassification of the entire planet. We have already arguedelsewhere for the consideration of this unique visual archiveas a multimedia atlas dominated by a descriptive visualregime (Castro, 2006): we would nonetheless like to insiston a number of important aspects, in particular the projects

cartographic imagination.The Archives were imagined and funded by Albert Kahn

(18601940), a self-made banker who devoted his life andfortune to carrying out a broad philanthropic project. Thelatter included the institution of travel scholarships foryoung graduates, the establishment and funding of dif-ferent intellectual and political forums, the backing of noless than 14 publications and the creation of the Archives.The purpose of the collection was, in Kahns own words,to put into effect a sort of photographic inventory of thesurface of the globe as inhabited and developed by Man atthe beginning of the twentieth century (Kahn quoted inBeausoleil and Delamarre, 1993: 92). In view of this

objective, a team of five cameramen and six photographersvisited 48 countries in the world between 1912 and 1931,assembling 4000 stereoscopic photographs, 72,000 auto-chromes and around 183,000 m of film, amounting tomore than 100 h of projection.

Referring to the Autour du Monde travel scholarships(established by Kahn in 1898), Henri Bergson wrote of hisfriends will to open the great book of the world to an eliteof young graduates (Bergson, 1931). The expression is infact from philosopher Rene Descartes, a man who settled inHolland in 1628 and who was certainly familiar with thecartographic production of his time. What could this greatbook of the world stand for but an atlas, the visualencyclopaedia of the world (Figure 3)?

As we have already indicated, the Archives the la Planeteconstitute, in many respects, a modern multimedia atlas, acollection of images whose aim is to convey geographicaland historical knowledge. The films, as well as theautochromes and the stereoscopic plates, were gatheredfor their value as historical documents containing thememory of a world whose fatal disappearance was by thenjust a question of time (Kahn quoted in Beausoleil andDelamarre, 1993: 92). Aiming to collect (by surveying theplanet), to organize (through the accumulation of images),and to present both geographical and historical informationon the represented countries, Kahns archives are asequenced inventory of the world where History and

Geography peacefully coexist. In that, they evoke JohanBlaeus Atlas, a book where Geography became the eye



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and the light of History (Blaeu quoted in Besse, 2003a). Asa matter of fact, the Archives films and photographs arejust another way of recreating reality, allowing us tocontemplate in our homes, directly under our eyes, thingsthat are very distant (Blaeu quoted in Besse, 2003a). Albert

Kahn himself wrote that in order to decipher the meaningof life, and appreciate the origin and significance of events,facts have a powerful, irresistible, and incorruptiblelanguage. As an inexhaustible haven for providing informa-tion, they project incessantly a light which illuminates spaceand time (Kahn, 1918: 23).

As Paula Amad has argued, the Archives documentaryproject cannot be dissociated from the establishment ofmodern archives and the genuine archival fever that sweptFrench culture in the late nineteenth century and the earlytwentieth century (Amad, 2001: 149). In this particularcontext, the contiguous notions of archive, atlas andmuseum often overlapped. As a matter of fact, if atlasesprove to be a relevant framework for the consideration of

Kahns visual collection, it is because they are not only away to create an image of the totality of the world, but alsoa means to organise visual knowledge. In other words, atlasesrefer as much to a strictly cartographic instrument as to agraphical means for the assemblage and combination ifnot montage of images. Ultimately, atlases are collectionspaces, open to different visual agendas, as a number ofcontemporary art projects suggest, from Gerhard Richtersto Walid Raads Atlas. Moreover, science historians PeterGalison and Lorraine Daston have recently demonstratedhow scientific atlases were central to the nineteenth centuryscientific practices across disciplines, playing an essentialrole in the pursue of the notion of objectivity. As the

authors observe, atlases are the dictionaries of the sciencesof the eye and to call atlas images illustrations is to belie

their primacy, for it suggests that their function is merelyancillary, to illustrate a text or theory (Galison and Daston,2007: 22). Run from the start by an acknowledgedgeographer Jean Brunhes (who recurrently used itsmaterial in its lectures and who had embarked, in the earlyteens, in another visual inventory of the world, the Atlas

photographique des formes du relief terrestre), Kahnscollection cannot be fully grasped without being placed ina precise scientific context, related to the establishment ofhistorical archives and to the constitution of French humangeography as a discipline. In this sense, Kahns images arelike atlas images, cultivating what Galison and Daston callthe disciplinary eye (Galison and Daston, 2007: 48).Paraphrasing the authors, it can be argued that the Archivesde la Planete were the visual foundation upon whichBrunhes scientific practice rested. What is more interestingin view of the mapping impulse is that the collection as anatlas refers both to a structure that is thoroughlygeographic and to a visual regime marked by its topo-

graphic, descriptive and serial appeal (Castro, 2006).Finally, the Archives must be situated in a broader visual

landscape, distinguished by the proliferation of (world)images. Maps and postcards, picturesque views andpanoramas, photographs and travelogues, all contribute tothe shaping and structuring of geographical imagination and to the transmission of geographical knowledge through images. Ultimately, the idea of a multimedia atlasdoes not make sense if it is not approached from thebroader perspective of visual culture. In this sense, thefamous gardens that Kahn created in Boulogne, near Paris,and Cap Martin, close to Nice, seem especially important. Ifthe first combined French, English and Japanese traditions,

the second gathered in the same space plants and trees ofAfrican, Algerian, Moroccan, Brazilian and Mexican ori-gins. Marie Bonhomme has rightly observed how thesegardens seem to realize the heterotopic dream of AlbertKahn (Bonhomme, 1995). In addition, it is important tolink Kahns garden to the historical tradition of geographicalgardens(Besse, 2003b). If Kahns gardens did not duplicatethe geographical reality of the world as it stands, theyconstitute nevertheless another visible demonstration of thephilanthropists utopia and his dream of a reconciled world,eventually made flat, scaled and coded by both cinema andphotography.

Aerial viewsOur last example examines aerial views, focusing on anextraordinary film shot from a dirigible shortly after theFirst World War. Surveying the combat zones of Flandersand northern France, En dirigeable sur les champs de bataille(1918) was made by the Cinematographic Service of theFrench Army (Service Cinematographique de lArmee),constituting a unique record of the state of destructioncaused by four years of conflict (Figure 4). The films birdseye views of ruined cities and villages, as well as its aerialshots of moonscape-like battlefields, reveal the full extent ofthe devastation, hinting at the reconstructions Herculeantask. The fact that the images were edited in order to

resemble a long sequence-shot makes the film even moreremarkable.

Figure 3. Detail from Interior of a Study (17101712), oil oncanvas, 77663.5 cm (Madrid, Museo Thyssen-Bornesmiza)



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Both the Lumiere Brothers and Edison Motion Picturesshot films from hot-air balloons at a very early date (1898and 1900 respectively), aerial photographs being anincreasingly popular visual theme at the beginning of thetwentieth century. What this exceptional aerial travellingfully explores, most likely for the first time, are the uniquepossibilities allowed by the combination of the eye of thecamera with the aerial motion of the airship, as well as thestriking documentary value of aerial images. If the cameraangle exposes the dimension, i.e. the geographic andquantitative scale of the devastation, the smoothness andfluidity of its aerial movement represent an unquestionablesource of emotion: emotion linked to the visual pleasure ofdiscovering the earths surface from a new and excitingangle of vision, emotion attached to the sudden revelationof the territory as yet another injured body, and e-motion,finally, of being able to move freely in the spacetimecontinuum. In this sense, En dirigeable sur les champs debataille illustrates better than any other film Paul Virilioswell-known claim that cinema is not I see, but I fly(Virilio, 1984, my translation). The cinematographicspecificity of these images is crucial, since no assemblageof aerial photographs could convey, in such an immediateand effective way, the intense sensorial stimulation broughtabout by the double kineticism of flight and film. Theattempt to simulate the impression of a continuous

movement is linked, in our opinion, to a timely awarenessof the virtues of such a combination. More than a realisticideal, the continuity of movement would be ultimatelybound to the double exploitation of cinematographic andaerial technology.

Situated halfway between the so-called primitivism offorms that distinguishes the first decade of cinemas historyand the avant-garde revolution looming in the post-warhorizon, this film without an author illustrates an acuteconsciousness of the potentialities of film and its language.What these images provide is nothing other than acinematographic sensation of the world, founded on theoriginal coupling of camera and aircraft. The film also

belongs to a larger documentary project, including theundertaking of an extensive photographic andcartographic

campaign. As French geographer Emmanuel de Martonnerecalled some decades after the conflict, the end of thehostilities was followed by the making of several airplanemaps (Martonne, 1948: 70): accurate plans of thedevastated areas were urgently needed, in order to makeprogress with reconstruction works. Therefore, this film

takes part of a genuine and extensive mapping project,articulated around two major elements: the inventory of theland through photographic, cinematographic and carto-graphic means and propaganda. That these images ofruins and gloomy battlefields seek (such as the panoramicshots discussed earlier) the exacerbation of patriotic feelingsseems indisputable, in particular because of their insistenceon the image of a sacrificed land and on the urgency of therebuilding campaign. The film is divided into four sections,which reconstitute the journey made by cameramen LucienLe Saint (18811931) and probably, by another two men.Several intertitles locate the views: the first section, entitledFrom Nieuport to Mont Kemmel, surveys the West

Flanders; the second section, From Bailleul to Mont-Saint-Eloy, documents the North and the Pas-de-Calais;the third part, From Saint-Quentin to Vauxaillon refers tothe Aisne and Oise; and finally, the fourth section, FromAilette to Reims covers the Marne. This landscape filmreveals a deeply wounded country, the analogy between theterritory and the body quickly imposing upon the viewersimagination.

CONCLUSION

In recent years, the idea of mapping has become theobject of much critical attention, gradually turning into afashionable notion that found its way well beyond the fieldof cartography. Responding to a general and widelyacknowledged spatial turn in the social sciences and thehumanities, this interest has both focused on the map as ameaningful artefact and on the process of mapping itself.The latter is understood to cover much more than theconventional techniques and operations deployed in orderto produce traditional cartographic objects. In this newcritical context, mapping can therefore refer to a multitudeof processes, from the cognitive operations implied in thestructuring of spatial knowledge to the discursive implica-tions of a particular visual regime. Drawing on thisparticular context, the examples discussed above explore a

number of issues related to cinemas spatial understanding,suggesting that a particular scopic regime, linked to thevisual experience of mapping and to a cinematographic artof describing, could be identified throughout film history.In this sense, this paper modestly responds to theepistemological shift brought about by the aforementionedspatial turn.

Far from being restricted to the early period of cinemashistory (or to non-fiction film), the mapping impulse wouldmanifest itself throughout different periods. Panoramicshots, in particular 360u pans, can be found in very differentworks, from early Edison titles (such as a collection ofpanoramas from the 1900 Paris World Fair) to contem-

porary artists works, conveying a will to describe throughfilmic means and often addressing complex spatiotemporal

Figure 4. En dirigeable sur les champs de bataille, Service cinema-tographique de larmee, 1918



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issues. Many of Jean-Marie Straubs and the late DanielleHuillets films such as Fortini Cani (1976) or Trop tot,trop tard (1981) include 360u pans, Straub havingaffirmed that a filmmaker is someone who surveys the landwith something other than measuring instruments (Straub,1995: 17). Atlases have turn into a popular means for the

assemblage of images: one could easily argue that such filmsas Godfrey Reggios Qatsi trilogy (19832002), could beapproached as cinematographic atlases, in the distanttradition of Kahns multimedia archive. Last but not least,aerial views have embodied different problems throughoutthe whole of film history, from documentarism to abstrac-tion, ornamentalism, surveillance, etc., deserving muchmore than a technical footnote in cinemas histories.

As a way of concluding, let us recall Harleys observationson the mapping impulse. According to the author, thephysical artefact we call map is but a small part of a widerhistory, that of mapping, a form of communicating aboutspace. One is tempted to ask, after Harley, how cinema fits

into this general history. If the notion of a mappingimpulse constitutes a starting point for such a questioning,the idea certainly needs to be further explored.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

Teresa Castro was born inLisbon and currently livesin Paris, where shes anAssistant Professor(ATER) at the Universitede Paris Est Marne-la-Vallee. After having stu-died Art History in Lisbon

and London, she com-pleted a PhD on Cinemaand the Mapping Impulseof Images at the Univer-

site de Paris III Sorbonne Nouvelle (2008). A formergrantee of the Fundacao de Ciencia e Tecnologia(Portugal), her current research focuses on visual cultureissues (in particular aerial views in cinema and photographyand photographic and cinematographic atlases) and therelations between cinema and contemporary art. A co-founder of the research group Le Silo, she also curates filmprogrammes and other cultural events.

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