Embodying Landscape, Transposing Space François Matthes's topographical maps of the Grand Canyon Nicholas Bauch Geographer-in-Residenc Spatial History Project Stanford University
Powell “wanted to map, carefully, with a consistent system of symbols and colors, and on a scale large enough to serve all normal foreseeable uses, the 3,000,000 square miles of the United States.” - Wallace Stegner, 1954
“The topography of the Grand Canyon proved to be next to ideal for plane-table methods …. Thousands of intersections and hundreds of elevations from one instrument station, - there is no other place on earth where it can be done.” - Francois Matthes, 1905
“The map (not just the plotting but the actual map) grows under your hand right out there in the field! …. It's mapping direct from nature, at first hand, like a painter with a landscape.” - David Greenhood, 1964
“The most magnificent picture of the Grand Canyon ever drawn, painted, or photographed .... Nearly diagramatic, it reproduces rock strata with miraculous accuracy - which is precisely what it was intended to do .... Not intended to be art, it succeeds in being art of a striking kind.” - Wallace Stegner, 1977