Japanese Gardens

March 28, 2006

Emily these days has been the one with time to check out websites. She came across a website dedicated to Japanese gardens, and pointed it out to me.

What is unique about this site is the way place is illustrated. It is one thing to show a map, and another thing to show a series of pictures, but neither one of these is satisfactory in building a mental picture of a visitation to the place. Pictures always seem out of context and hard to connect with each other, while a map is just a scheme.

The website on Japanese gardens finds a way to merge these two modes of representation. It provides a site map in the left corner, and then keys pictures to that map so that it is clear what direction and from what standpoint the viewer is looking. On this link press any of the yellow circles on the site map to see a picture from that point and in the direction shown.

This gives me some ideas about how to manage my own photographs of places—in my quest to be an amateur geographer. The key being to connect photographs with a site map so that the viewer can not only see nice pictures, but get a sense of what it is like to stand at various points along the way.

I think this could be used in tandem with a Google map, for example, with the points from which a photo is taken marked onto the map. It would then be a way to document a small town or a major downtown.. not to mention the kinds of sites I will be seeing this summer in Egypt. I think it would be quite useful to have a similar set up so that students could walk through, say, the Ibn Tulun mosque in Cairo.

This website on Japanese gardens also stirs something inside as I finish the last details on my dissertation and get ready to say goodbye to being a graduate student. Japanese gardens are beautiful.. but more attainable will be the art of Bansai. (The pictures for this entry are mine from the Japanese garden and Bansai exhibit at the Huntington Library.) These tended trees have always represented to me a life of simplicity and peace. I have often considered buying a Bansai tree.. just last year we saw some for sale at the Candler Park fall festival.. but were Katrina evacuees really going to invest in a Bansai tree? This year, though.. yes, we will.