In one view, a map is like a candle in the dark, casting light upon unseen aspects of the earth; in another view, however, it can act as a kaleidoscope that obscures the truth. No map is infallible; all maps are abstractions. The desk of a modern cartographer is somewhere between a photographer’s darkroom and a child’s sandbox—the raw data must be carefully handled before it develops into something sensible, but it can also easily be pushed around. The mission of Sandbox Atlas is to illuminate the interesting, embrace playful exploration, and to distinguish between candle and kaleidoscope.
Ben Meader is the primary manager of Sandbox Atlas. He lives and works as a cartographer and GIS analyst in South Bristol, Maine. To learn more about Ben and his work, please visit his business website:
". . . Yes, but how about geography? No, I don’t merely want a new geography. I want a geography of my own, a geography that shall tell me what I want to know and omit everything else. [. . .] Put all the mountains and the cities and the oceans on your maps and then tell us only about the people who live in those places and why they are there and where they came from and what they are doing—a sort of human interest story applied to geography. And please stress the places that are really interesting and don’t pay quite as much attention to the others . . ."
- from a letter to Hendrik Willem van Loon