Cartography and photography: connivances and (un)certainties of two iconographic mediums. A snapshot

Since its official invention in 1839, photography has been linked to cartography and vice versa, first for aspects of territorial appropriation and control (military and colonial applications), then in the developments of radical and artistic cartography. Today, photography and cartography stand at the intersection of institutional, scientific, amateur and artistic practices, all mediated by technology. While this diversity of viewpoints is a considerable enrichment to contemporary cartographic representations, it also raises questions about the legitimacy of their producers. Do maps and photography, as they are practiced and studied today, blur the space they represent, or is the opposite the case? This article takes a brief – and therefore non-exhaustive – look at the shared history of these two media up to the present day. There are three main topics: technology, history, and artistic and artisanal approaches.