Map of North America

Abelardo Morell has long been interested in what he calls “symbolic paper”: maps, money, and books, among other forms. Like photographs, maps employ conventions to represent spatial information. In his pictures of maps, Morell often gives these two-dimensional diagrams their own topography, transforming the plans into something akin to what they represent. As he has explained, “It’s important to me to have what I photograph undergo a certain transformation—to become a thing different from what we are used to, to be another version of itself.”