Diomede Islands Dichotomy
I stumbled unto these islands while making the Aleutian Island Maps. The Diomede Islands sit in between Russia and the United States in the middle of the Bering Sea. They are quite peculiar and full of cartographic dichotomies. Their remoteness and lack of economic or strategic value is in sharp contrast with where they sit geo-politically. There are two islands... Big Diomede Island and Little Diomede Island. One is Russian, one is American. North of the Islands lies the Chukchi Sea while south is the Bering Sea. Though clearly related geologically, they are split by the politically-decided International Dateline. This means that it is always one day on Little Diomede Island and a day later on Big Diomede Island.

What I wanted to communicate on this map is the amazing amount of political, man-made attributes that define these islands that are otherwise of almost no interest to anyone. I also wanted to overlay this political information in a rigid, logical way that appears orthangonal to the nature of the islands as organic shapes that exist in the middle of the cold and rugged sea.

It might have been this map that first got me thinking about the double meaning of "Political Map". Political Maps typically refer to maps that depict country borders, cities, states, etc. But once you start looking at the subjective nature of maps and their ability to represent certain political views over others, the term "political" starts to be almost a humorous label. I doubt that there could be anything but a political map of Kashmir given its disputed status between India and Pakistan.