36

Do maps distort the message they want to convey ? When the author came in Belarus (Byelorussia) for the first time to begin his research work the officials showed him a map of the radioactivity damage. The contaminated territories he discovered did not fit well however with the reality and his representation of it. The map shows the contamination distribution like a photograph, i.e. gives a fixed image of a phenomenon that is invisible besides. It only shows what the officials want to show. As a non-specialist in cartography the author evokes the feeling of helplessness and the fatalism of people confronted with a crisis which has not still revealed its whole human dimension. Are maps able to help us let « emerge a vision of the reality » ?