Steinberg Projections
This year, The New Yorker magazine is 100 years old. For many readers, the magazine is connoted with one cover in particular that sums up its amazing wit and insight. That 1976 cover by Saul Steinberg showed the common person's view of the world as viewed from 9th Ave., in Manhattan. As evidence of Steinberg's humor and genius, readers got it immediately, and the demand spawned posters of the image. Other artists got it too and made their own versions or even started extrapolating the idea to other cities. But Steinberg's image wasn't an accidental hole-in-one; the idea had evolved and distilled in his mind over decades. In a soon-to-be-published article, we take a look at Steinberg's culmination of a stream of cartography that sought to show a regional take on geography, full of the prejudices and perspectives of a local demographic. It becomes evident that Steinberg's image wasn't just a clever, single instance; it was an entire approach and method to looking at the world, like a projection, but focused on culture and perception more than latitude and longitude.
