Visualization in Geography: Scopic Regimes in Geography Between Photogrammetry and Digital Cartography, ca. 1930-1980

Visuality and visual representation in the modern sciences and their role for the production of scientific knowledge are widely debated within the history of science and science studies. At the same time there is often very little work done from an internal perspective of the respective disciplines. As an empirical discipline at the intersection between natural sciences, social sciences and the humanities Geography is well situated to reflect on its own paradigms. Nevertheless, disciplinary history and the history of rationalities and knowledge only play a marginal role within German-speaking Geography. At the same time it is one of the commonplaces of disciplinary self-description to state that geography is a visual discipline, a science which knowledge is highly visual. The research project, therefore, aims at the visuality of geographical knowledge and the scopic regimes of Geography.

To approach these scopic regimes in German-speaking Geography the research projects takes a historiographic perspekctive. It utilizes the works from the history of science to engage in a geneaology of the geographical gaze between 19th century modern cartography and the emergence of geographical information systems. Case studies between the introduction of photogrammetric techniques within Geography in the 1930s and 1940s and early forms of digital cartography will explore moments of a transformations of scopic regimes in 20th century German-speaking.