Daniel Rosenberg (2) (1966–)

I think it has been in my primary school that I came into contact with chronographs: graphic representations of history, usually chronologically, in the form of a timeline. I see them still hanging in the classroom, at a fairly high altitude, starting with the 'prehistory' and ending in the culmination of our civilization: the kingdom of Belgium (yes, I still date from the times that national history was the pinnacle of the history lesson).

This book outlines how that chronographic representation of time originated and evolved, from the tables of Eusebius in the 4th century, to the timelines that you find in numerous graphic applications on your computer or in museums. In their introduction, the authors put a strong emphasis on the conceptual history visions that underlie those graphic representations, and that was exactly what pulled me to reading this book: “traditional chronographic forms performed both historical work and heavy conceptual lifting. They assembled, selected, and organized various bits of historical information in the form of dated lists. And the chronologies of a given period may tell us as much about its visions or past and futures as do its historical narratives.” In other words: the representations should reflect an own representation of time/history at the conceptual level.

Unfortunately, the authors have completely lost sight of this intention en route. This whole book is a somewhat chronological sketch of the various forms of chronographs with emphasis on the technical and practical aspects: in tables, diagrams, tree-structure representations, with pictograms or concrete visual representations, colored or not, etc. Pretty interesting, certainly, but there is hardly anything to be found in this book about the conceptual background and implications of these various forms. Regrettable. Moreover, many illustrations are so small that you can hardly distinguish anything relevant. A missed opportunity.… (mer)