"
Walking itself has a
cultural history, from
Pilgrims to the wandering Japanese
poets, the
English Romantics and contemporary
long-distance walkers.
My first
work made by walking, in
1967, was a straight line in a
grass field, which was also my own
path, going 'nowhere'. In the subsequent
early map works, recording very
simple but precise walks on
Exmoor and Dartmoor, my intention was to make a new art which was also a new way of walking: walking as
art. Each walk followed my own unique, formal
route, for an original
reason, which was
different from
other categories of walking, like
travelling. Each walk, though not by
definition conceptual, realised a particular idea. Thus walking - as art - provided an ideal means for me to
explore relationships between
time,
distance,
geography and measurement. These walks are
recorded or described in my work in three ways: in
maps,
photographs or
text works, using whichever form is the most appropriate for each different
idea. All these forms feed the imagination, they are the distillation of
experience.
Richard Long,
Walking the Line, Thames & Hudson (repr. 2005)
