Ami Sioux, a French photographer, has a new book called REYKJAVIK 64°08N 21°54W. It’s the first in a five-part series (Berlin, Paris, London, and New York to follow) of what she calls “personal city guides.” For this project, she asked friends and acquaintances (fifty in all) to draw a map for her to get to a place that has personal meaning or significance to them. She pairs these hand-drawn maps with photographs of the destination represented on the map. Unlike Stanley Brouwn, she doesn’t re-stamp these drawings as her own (besides publishing them in a book with her name on the cover). The obvious care and effort present in many of the maps tells a story not only about the place, but about her relationship with the cartographer. Unlike a “This Way Brouwn” these maps are not only drawing in the minds of their commissioners, they are also drawings in the minds of their creators. This fundamental difference changes the power structure of the exchange. It makes Ami Sioux’s project less of a conceptual exercise, and opens the door to collaboration.
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