ABSTRACT
Ideas of the visual in geography are well established in terms of formal cartographic practices, the analysis of cultural practices such as landscape painting, and, perhaps, more recently, imagery that geographers construct themselves as a way of representing place. Possibly, the most iconic visual imagery associated with geography is that of the map, which in taking a scientific approach to the recording of space positioned maps and mapping as neutral and objective. However, in the late 1980s, the map was challenged and revealed as subjective, rhetorical and power laden. Whilst this realisation offered the potential for seeing maps as a form of agency, it failed to challenge a map's ontological security. In terms of addressing accusations of methodological timidity, geographers have begun to engage with everyday life and place using methods that can be described as creative, more often than not drawing from artistic practices such as performance, poetry or other forms of creative writing.
