i once was lost

Wakaba Noda, from Making a Map

Yesterday, my copy of Wakaba Noda's Making a Map arrived and I've been swooning over it ever since. I have to admit, I want to spend a little time with it and see how I feel after the initial blush. I must acknowledge that I'm swayed by this really great statement/publisher's description:

Trying to create a perfect place by assembling photographs of small wonders, Noda makes a map of a world not defined by geography, but by the possibilities that photography offers.

Kind of reminds me of another favorite statement, the preface to Some Twenty Odd Visions, a book put out by Blue Sky Gallery all the way back in 1978.

Robert Di Franco, from Some Twenty Odd Visions

The preface:

These photographs are maps to get lost by. They are not instruments to guide our travels through the unknown. Rather than making new territory familiar, they make familiar territory new. As children, we never quite knew what was going on, and the world was filled with mystery. Now that we have grown up and found out what things are, we have forgotten how to imagine what else they might be. We are creatures of habit, and have come to an agreement about how the world looks. However, in these photographs the normal everyday objects and spaces that we take for granted lose their familiarity, and the world regains the richness and mystery that we once saw.