1942 Jo Mora Pictorial Map ('Carte') of Los Angeles, California

This is a 1942 Jo Mora pictorial map of Los Angeles, California. This is Mora's rarest and most sought-after pictorial map and arguably the best pictorial map of Los Angeles ever issued. It is filled with Mora's unique humor and artistry, which captures Los Angeles' culture, folklore, and history.

A Closer Look

A pictorial map of Los Angeles occupies over half of the sheet, with coverage embracing from Burbank to the Pacific Ocean and from Malibu to Santa Fe Springs. Vignettes mark sites throughout the city, including the La Brea Tar Pits, the zoo and Greek Theatre in Griffith Park, U.S.C., U.C.L.A., and Lincoln Park. Numerous movie studios are labeled, including Disney (complete with Mickey Mouse), 20th Century Fox (marked by a fox in a suit), Paramount, Colombia, and RKO. People flock to Los Angeles's beaches and are illustrated swimming and otherwise frolicking.

An elaborate pictorial border fills the remainder of the sheet. The border recounts Los Angeles' history from its founding in 1781 through 1942. Depicted events include the gold rush, the Pony Express, battles during the Mexican-American War, the arrival of the transcontinental railroads, and the constant struggle to bring water to the city. Along the bottom border, Mora tracks LA's population and the evolution of women's fashion.

20th Century Pictorial Cartography

Pictorial qualities have been common in cartography from at least the 16th century when publishers like Braun and Hogenberg incorporated view-like qualities and other pictorial elements into their famous city plans. Braun and Hogenberg, and similar cartographers, issued their town books to express not necessarily the geography of their subjects but rather the 'essence' of the town/city. As mathematics and surveying principles advanced, travel increased, and the ability to translate two-dimensional cartographic perspectives into an understanding of the actual world became commonplace, maps themselves transformed. This trend is a recognizable progression that evolved cartographic conventions from the 17th to the 19th centuries. By the late 19th century, most maps had become geographical tools that illustrated the region cartographically but failed in the original raison d'être, as expressed by Braun and Hogenberg, to illustrate a place's 'essence.' So, where a city map of 19th-century Paris might provide a completely navigable presentation of the city, one could glean almost nothing of Paris' character from it. In the late 18th century, the first modern 'pictorial' style maps developed. These maps, like Tomas Lopez's 1788 map of Seville, attempted to provide both cartographic accuracy and pictorial elements that might convey the city's character. In that case, Lopez incorporated pictorial vignettes to illustrate important buildings and monuments. This style became increasingly common throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, particularly for centers of commerce like London, Paris, and Rome, where they were often mass-produced and referred to as 'monumental' maps. The style further evolved in the early to mid-20th century, when revolutionary cartographers and illustrators like MacDonald Gill, Jo Mora, Frank Dorn, Ernest Dudley Chase, and many others combined vignette style illustrations, modern printing techniques, and inspiration from Japanese printmaking and manga and clever satirical cartographers/artists like Fred Rose, to produce maps that once again focused on revealing the essence a place, usually, but not always, at the sacrifice of cartographic precision.

Publication History and Census

This map was created and published by Jo Mora in 1942. Two primary editions were published: one without a title and one with a title (as here). An additional printing of the titleless variant was later printed on butcher paper in a limited edition of 50-100 copies. We note a single cataloged example in OCLC, which is part of the collection at the Library of Congress, but as that example has not been digitized, we do not know which edition it represents. The David Rumsey Map Collection has an example of all 3 variants.