ABSTRACT
Our maps should be photographs—or at least this is how Theodor Scheimpflug, a former captain in the Austro-Hungarian army, used to explain his idea of cartography. Until his early death in 1911, he worked on methods to transform aerial photographs into precise maps. If photography were applied to cartographic rectification, he believed, the map would in essence draw itself, and map production thus be automated. Extensive areas could then be mapped rapidly. The essay discusses the techniques on which Scheimpflug’s various types of photomap relied. In contrast to Scheimpflug’s rhetoric regarding the inherent naturalness of the photomap, it emphasizes the hybrid character of his images: for not only was every “Photokarte” composed of several aerial photographs but also the map sheet itself had to be heavily processed to meet cartographic standards. On closer examination, Scheimpflug’s concept of a photomap therefore exceeded the idea of mimesis. On the one hand, his “Photokarte” could give a photographic impression of terrain, as in the case of his hot-air balloon panoramas; on the other, his later maps betrayed barely a hint of their origins in the photographic medium. Yet superimposing the basic photographic map sheet with images and data from other sources generated new topographical knowledge. Scheimpflug’s hybrid images, which fall between index, icon, and diagram, can accordingly be regarded as prototypes of the layered information we find in geographic information systems (GIS) today.
