Category Archives: Photography

Ingrid Pollard “Wordsworth Heritage” (1992)

photographs of Black people in the landscape

Ingrid Pollard [credit]

[CREDIT]

This photographic work was originally presented as a billboard image on 25 urban sites around  the UK. The image takes the form of a mass produced tourist postcard. It shows the profile of William Wordsworth, 19th century English Poet Laureate. Wordsworth and his poetry are icons closely linked with the ‘Lake District’. A group of contemporary Black walkers transform the  ‘Romantic’ landscape and ideas of History and Heritage.

From Ingrid Pollard (2004) in The Art of Walking: A Field Guide:

“Going to the Lake District over the years, collecting postcards, deliberately searching out England’s timeworn countryside ‘the way it’s always been,’ searching the postcard-stand for the card that shows a sunny upland scene with a black person standing, looking over the hills. Never finding it. I fantisise about encountering that image amongst the England of craggy rocks, rushing streams and lowly sheep. Simple stories, simple connections.”

People standing in front of Billboard

Billboard, Kings Cross London. Dr Julian Agyeman & Ingrid Pollard

Regina José Galindo “Who Can Erase The Traces?” (2003)

woman leaving bloody footprints

Regina José Galindo, Quién puede borrar las huellas? (Who can erase the traces?, 2003), performance, Guatemala City, photo: José Osorio

(credit)

In her most celebrated work, Who Can Erase the Traces? (¿Quién puede borrar las huellas?, 2003), she walked barefoot through the streets of Guatemala City, from the Palacio Nacional de la Cultura to the Corte de Constitucionalidad, carrying a basin filled with human blood into which she periodically dipped her feet. The trail of footprints visualized her reaction to the recent news that Efraín Ríos Montt, a former military dictator responsible for the most destructive period of the country’s internal conflict, had been permitted to run for president despite constitutional prohibitions. In this work, the line between Galindo’s body as object and subject was so subtle that the blood covering her feet appeared to be her own; she embodied the war’s victims, taking their blood as hers and appropriating their suffering.

Franko B “I Miss You” (1999-2005)

The artist performs nude, walking up and down a catwalk, creating lines with drips of his own blood. The canvas below is later turned into paintings.

The work is documented with both photographs and video:

Performances: [credit]

2005

  • Palais des Beaux Arts, Brussels, Belgium

2003

  • Tate Modern, London, UK

2002

  • Circolo des Bellas Artes, Madrid, Spain
  • Cenpi, Beograd, Serbia
  • Gallerija Kapelica, Ljubljana, Slovenia

2000

  • Art Live, Turin, Italy
  • Malmo, Sweden
  • Fierce Festival, Birmingham, UK
  • Beaconsfield, London, UK

1999

  • Antwerp, Belgium

Susan Stockwell “Taking a Line for a Walk” (2002-03)

Taking a Line for a Walk from Susan Stockwell on Vimeo.

“12 minute film, 2002

A film documenting a performance called Taking a Line For a Walk by artist Susan Stockwell. It shows a line being drawn around Stockwell in South London. Susan, with her Line Drawing machine, followed the boundary of old Stockwell and left a continuous line with temporary white paint. It lasted for 2 weeks, was 2.7 miles long and took 3 hours to draw. The idea was to make a work where a little known area of London was defined and mapped physically for all to see. The map was taken into 3 dimensions on a life size scale and turned into a walking drawing, a trace of an idea and a performance.

The performance was part of Stockwell Festival and came out of a project called ‘Taking a Line for a Walk: Mapping Stockwell’ which Susan did with pupils from Stockwell Park School.
Shot by Polly Nash, edited in collaboration with Susan Stockwell and produced by Spectacle Productions.
spectacle.co.uk/catalogue_production.php?id=165

Images from the performance, Taking a Line for a Walk have been published in the book, The Art of Walking: a field guide by David Evans Blackdog, 2013.
blackdogonline.com/all-books/the-art-of-walking.html”

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‘Taking a Line for Walk’ (2003) was a performance where the artist drew a white line around the area of Stockwell in South London defining and mapping the district. The line was made with white poster paint and a Line Drawing Machine, it was 1.7 miles in length and lasted for 2 weeks. The idea was to physically define a little known area of London while also making a 3-dimensional walking drawing and a trace of an idea. It also references the artist’s name alluding to her identity and boundary setting.

The performance was part of Stockwell Festival and came out of a project called ‘Taking a Line for a Walk: Mapping Stockwell’, which Susan ran with students from Stockwell Park School.
A 12-minute film was made that documents the performance, also called ‘Taking a Line for a Walk’.

‘Line Drawing’ is a 2-minute film that examines the line as it’s being drawn in ‘Taking a Line For a Walk’. The film concentrates on the essence of the line, the variety of marks, speed, character, rhythm and pavement surfaces. It creates a mesmeric, meditative and beautiful reflection of the drawings process and everyday pavements, seldom considered or seen. It’s sometimes difficult to know if the artist is taking the line for a walk or the line is leading the artist; perhaps a metaphor for artistic process and those magical moments when the art work takes on a life of its own.

Film shot by Polly Nash, edited by Polly Nash and Susan Stockwell, produced by Spectacle Productions. (credit)

Richard Long “A Line in the Himilayas” (1975)

A simple land-art piece, Long has made a line out of colored rocks in the Himalyan mountains.

a line of white rocks in a mountainous area

Richard Long “A Line in the Himilayas” (1975)

[credit]

“Richard Long has, since the beginning of his career, worked outside the gallery to create works by walking, where he leaves marks and traces on the landscape. His work has encompassed making epic walks lasting many days to remote parts of the world, as well as making use of the materials from the River Avon. His work is made through the relationship he develops with a place and his physical involvement with it. On the course of a walk this can entail rearranging natural elements, or walking in lines or circles so that his presence has been made manifest.

As he has remarked, “These works are of the place, they are a rearrangement of it and in time will be reabsorbed by it. I hope to make work for the land, not against it”. Accordingly, many of his walks are made visible through marks on the world which form basic shapes – lines and circles – rather than through constructions or new artifacts. Although Long has often been associated with the earliest days of ‘land art’, his interventions in landscapes are ordinarily temporary or humble and almost always simple.”

Marina Abramović and Ulay, The Lovers – The Great Wall Walk (1988)

Marina Abramović and Ulay, The Lovers – The Great Wall Walk (1988) China

Marina Abramović and Ulay, The Lovers – The Great Wall Walk (1988) China

The Lovers - summary

The Lovers – summary by Apramovic

(credit)

Marina Abramović and her partner Ulay ended 12-years of intense personal love and shocking art collaboration, in 1988, with an art stunt never seen before. It was named “The Lovers: the Great Wall Walk” in which they decided to make a spiritual journey that would end their relationship: each of them walked half the length of the Great Wall of China, starting from the two opposite ends and meeting in the middle. There they would end it all.

Marina Abramović and Ulay, The Lovers – The Great Wall Walk (1988) China

Marina Abramović and Ulay, The Lovers – The Great Wall Walk (1988) China

Abramovic started walking westward while Ulay walking eastward, from the eastern end of the Great Wall of China, at Shan Hai Guan to the opposite end at Jaiyuguan. It would take three months for the couple to meet in the middle, where they embraced each other and went their separate ways. After covering 2500km each in 90 days, they would break up their relationship. They met at Er Lang Shan, in Shen Mu, Shaanxi province. Here, they embraced each other and said goodbye. From then on they would both go on with their life and work separately.

Abramović conceived this walk in a dream, and it provided what she thought was an appropriate, romantic ending to a relationship full of mysticism, energy, and attraction. She later described the process: “We needed a certain form of ending, after this huge distance walking towards each other. It is very human. It is in a way more dramatic, more like a film ending … Because in the end we both would be really alone, whatever we would do.”

//kickasstrips.com/2015/01/lovers-abramovic-ulay-walk-the-length-of-the-great-wall-of-china-from-opposite-ends-meet-in-the-middle-and-breakup/

//publicdelivery.org/marina-abramovic-the-lovers-the-great-wall-walk/

Marina Abramović walks China’s Great Wall only to break up//publicdelivery.org › Performance

Richard Wentworth “To Walk” (2001)

photos of a printed brochure

Richard Wentworth

Wentworth works with photography as an archive for walking.

For this piece he published a number of his walking photos to a broadsheet/folded-poster, “To Walk,” for the English towns of Charleston, Ramsgate, and Rochester to encourage the public to take a fresh look at their urban and rural landscapes.

(credit: Walk Ways catalog)

Martin Kersels, Tripping (1995)

As a large man, Kersels often makes work dealing with his imposing physical presence. He examines stereotypes associated with his gendered body size: clumsy, pathetic, dangerous. These staged photos play into those stereotypes about awkwardness, while the precision of the staging can be interpreted to contradict this reading. (credit: Walk Ways catalog)

—

“Martin Kersels is much larger than most people. He was once described as a “man-mountain” by his friend and colleague Leslie Dick. As a man who stands 6’7” tall and weighs 300 pounds, Kersels draws attention to his body, its size, and the things he’s able to do with it. …

Physicality permeates Kersels’ work. He uses himself as a subject for expressing the emotions we share by virtue of being corporeal. One of these emotions is vulnerability, which Kersels exposes in photographic series that capture him tripping, falling, and riding a bicycle that is too small for his frame. As people, we share embarrassment at the thought of falling in public or in watching someone else trip. However, Kersels’ Tripping series shows us just the thing that embarrasses us. The artist photographed himself tripping on public sidewalks in populated areas and in broad daylight. Tripping highlights Kersels’ desire to connect to others by exposing himself in an embarrassing, although staged, moment. …

Established themes of vulnerability, the body, humor, and playfulness create a thread of continuity among his photographic and sculptural works. …

About the Artist:

Martin Kersels was born in Los Angeles, California in 1960. He began his undergraduate degree in 1978 at the University of California, Los Angeles. After applying to film school and not being accepted, Kersels decided to pursue art history. Kersels then took studio art courses after he decided that art history was not for him; he thought he was a ‘horrible writer.’ He received his bachelors degree in art from UCLA in 1984. After he graduated, he became a member of a neo-dadaist performance art group called SHRIMPS.

Kersels described his performance work with SHRIMPS as movement-based, using very few words and a high level of slapstick comedy, based on the fallibility of the body. Others describe SHRIMPS as a group known for their bizarre costumes and lumbering movements. The women in SHRIMPS were small and muscular and the men were all 6’7” or taller. The first series of SHRIMPS performances were about redefining views of big men being unkind or threatening. The performer Weba Garretson, who later worked with SHRIMPS, described meeting the group by saying, “I was scared of them, even though they seemed like such nice people.” When funding for performance-based art work began to disappear in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Kersels decided to go back to school. In 1993, Kersels was accepted to graduate school at UCLA, where he concentrated on integrating his performance work with the human body with object making.

Kersels received his Master of Fine Arts degree from UCLA in 1995. When Kersels helped the artist Paul McCarthy videotape his performance work, it helped change Kersels’ perspective about making interdisciplinary art. Kersels served as co-director of California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) Program in Art from 1999 until moving to the Yale School of Art in 2012, where he became Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in Sculpture. Kersels has exhibited his work in major exhibitions including the 1997 Whitney Biennial, as well as in many solo exhibitions.” (credit)

Eleanor Antin “100 Boots” (1971-73)

These photographs of staged boots were printed as 51 postcards. Viewers can read these works knowing they were influenced by the Vietnam War and ideas of protesting, parading, trespassing, and communing with nature. The images start and California and end as the boots march into the Museum of Modern Art.

François Morelli “Transatlantic Walk” (1985)

man with sculptural backpack

François Morelli

This walk commemorated the 40th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. The artist carried a hollow fiberglass sculpture in the shape of a charred human torso on his back as he traveled from Berlin to Cologne to Amsterdam to Paris to New York to Philadelphi.

He archived the walk with photos, drawings, and writing. He engaged in many conversations.

He ritualistically filled the sculpture with water or air at various times symbolizing keeping his companion alive.

Further reading:

  • “Walk Ways” exhibition catalog. Essay by Stuart Horodner. Foreword by Judith Richards. (also credit for the above information)