Moochin Photoman
Drever aka Tim Robinson
At some point in the mid-1970s Tim Robinson was asked by a postmistress in Connemara to draw a map of the Aran island of Inishmore. “To help the tourists,” she told him. He agreed.
There are maps — and there are maps. Four decades before Mr. Robinson began to consider a map of Inishmore, Alfred Korzybski reminded us of this obvious fact: the map is not the territory. If you want to know where this place is, or how far it is to that other place, then almost any map will do. If you want to know the place and not just locate it, then you need a deep map. Then you need a Tim Robinson.
A deep map isn’t just cartography; it’s layers of biography, archaeology, biology, history, ornithology, botany, sociology, folklore, architecture, ecology, legend and myth. To construct his map of Inishmore, Robinson first had to learn the Irish language. He had to learn the geological forces and meteorological conditions that carved the island. He had to learn the island’s history and read the diaries of early visitors and listen to the songs written by the Aran islanders and sung by the hearth fires. Robinson had to walk the island. To put his own feet on the stony soil. To see the entire island with his own two eyes.
It took Robinson a decade to publish Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage — the first half of his deep map, which only covered the island’s wild, storm-lashed coast. It took another decade to complete Stones of Aran: Labyrinth, which explored the island’s interior. Sure, you can buy a regular map of the Aran Islands, and it’ll get you from Kilronan to Dún Aonghasa. You can even buy lovely maps created by Mr. Robinson, himself. But the map is not the territory. If you want to know the island, first read the books. Then go there and put your own feet on the ground.
Blog photograph copyrighted to the photographer and used with permission by utata.org. All photographs used on utata.org are stored on flickr.com and are obtained via the flickr API. Text is copyrighted to the author, greg fallis and is used with permission by utata.org. Please see Show and Share Your Work
