Coastal Profiles: A Cultural Technique between Water and Land.

The Network Topographic Visual Media's workshop series in the autumn and winter season 2025/26 will be focusing on coastal profiles. These visual media, dating mostly from the 17th to 19th centuries, occupy a space between maps and views. Coastal profiles are often featured on historic maps, either vertically folding up on a coastline, or placed along the edges as independent graphic elements. Series of coastal profiles are found in historic sailing manuals and were drawn in large numbers by sailors, naval officers, and professional draughtsmen who accompanied expeditions. In addition to local knowledge and visual orientation, the cultural technique of producing and reading coastal profiles was essential for the navigation along coasts, in contrast to oceanic navigation which relied on instruments, mathematical and astronomical calculations, and nautical charts. However, coastal profiles also depict the zones where water and land meet, zones of contact and risk, of transit, trade, piracy and espionage, of intersecting ecosystems, and of political and military interests.

How, then, can we consider the relationship between coastal profiles as visual media, and the complex social, political, economic, military and ecological processes of coastal regions? To what extent are the production and use of coastal profiles, as well as their medial and visual logics, connected to these ambivalent spaces?

Fr., 24 Oct 2025, 14:00–15:30 CET
Ulrike Gehring (Universität Trier)
Shaping the Atmosphere: Weather Logs on Board Dutch Expedition Ships

Fr., 21 Nov 2025, 14:00–15:30 CET
Wouter de Vries (Independent Researcher, Hoorn)
Coastal Profiles: between cultural construction and technical skill

Fr., 23 Jan 2026, 14:00–15:30 CET
Kelly Presutti (Cornell University, Ithaca, New York)
Coastal Infrastructure and the Production of a Maritime Aesthetic in France

Fr., 20 Feb 2026, 14:00–15:30 CET
Bernhard Siegert (Universität Weimar)
Coastal Profiles, Line-of-Sight Navigation, and the Birth of the Seascape around 1600

The meetings will take place online via zoom. If you wish to register for the entire series or a single event, please subscribe to our newsletter at https://www.arthistoricum.net/netzwerke/ntb/newsletter, or contact us at ntbkunstgeschichte.org
For more information: https://www.arthistoricum.net/en/networks/ntb
Concept and organization: Magdalena Becker, Tabea Braun, Ulrike Boskamp, Amrei Buchholz, and Annette Kranen