Ed Fairburn’s Map Portraits: Faces Found in Roads and Contours

A map is designed to help you find a place. In Ed Fairburn's portraits, it can also lead you towards a face: a road becomes a line of shading, a cluster of routes deepens a shadow and a coastline helps define a feature.

The pleasure is in moving between two readings. Look closely and the map remains visible. Step back and the portrait gathers itself from the same marks.

Cartographic lines as drawing material

Fairburn's own website presents his work and current projects. His portraits use existing cartographic material as more than a decorative background; the map's lines help shape the image that emerges.

That makes the choice of source material important. A dense street network offers a different visual structure from an open area crossed by contours or a chart filled with fine astronomical marks.

The original feature mentioned a Denver exhibition that ended in December 2015. It is historical context, not an event visitors can still attend. For present exhibitions or available work, use the artist's current information.

Follow a facial feature back into the map

Choose a small part of a portrait, such as an eye or the edge of a cheek. Then look for the map details that contribute to it. Which lines were already there, and where has the artist added density or contrast?

You may find that a road remains readable even while it serves the face. That double role is what gives the work its depth: the source is transformed without disappearing completely.

The portrait does not necessarily describe a person from the mapped location. Visual relationships should not be turned into a biography unless the artist supplies that connection.

A map-based page for a personal travel journal

For a personal journal, begin with a map you have permission to use or draw a simple map of your own walk. Choose a few places that mattered: the bakery where you stopped, a bridge, the route back to the station.

Add marks that respond to the existing lines rather than covering everything with a large picture. You might shade the route, draw a small object found along it or use a colour associated with the day.

The aim is your own visual record, not a close copy of Fairburn's portrait. A rough page can hold a strong memory because its marks connect with something you actually did.

The associations held by a familiar route

Maps are practical tools, but they can also hold personal associations. One street means a first arrival; another means a meal shared with someone you rarely see.

For a different way to place a small scene inside an object, explore Peter Adams-Shawn's Ringscapes photographs. Both projects reward a second look at a surface that might otherwise be taken for granted.

Fairburn's work makes that second look especially satisfying. The face appears, the roads remain, and neither reading quite replaces the other. You can keep travelling between them without leaving the page.

Existing marks and the portrait they help form

A road network offers ready-made changes of density: closely packed lines in one area, more open space in another. Fairburn can respond to those differences when developing shadow and contour. The drawing therefore begins with a surface that already has structure, unlike blank paper. Part of the interest is noticing where the portrait follows that structure and where the artist has had to build a new relationship between existing marks.

The earlier selection included maps of Denver, Los Angeles and Australia, as well as a First World War trench map of northern France. A trench map carries a different historical purpose from a city street plan, even when both offer lines an artist can use. Fairburn described choosing principally for visual qualities, so the mapped place should not be turned into an invented identity for the sitter. The result holds two subjects together: a face, and a document that already represented a place before the drawing began.