understated and pertinent, Richard Long has
described his work as: ‘‘Art made by walking in
landscapes. Photographs of sculptures made along
the way. Walks made into textworks’’ (http://www.
richardlong.org/).
Born in Bristol, England, in 1945, Long attended
Bristol School of Art, gaining a Diploma in Art and
Design in 1966. He went on to study fine art although
not specifically photography at St. Martins School of
Art during 1966–1968. He made his first works of art
by means of walking in landscape in 1967 including
the pieceA Line Made By Walking.Emergingaspart
of a new generation of British artists who were to
achieve international importance, including Victor
Burgin and Gilbert & George, his first major exhibi-
tion was staged in the Galerie Konrad Fischer, Dus-
seldorf, in 1968. He began to make works specifically
for gallery installations includingThree Circles of
StonesforThe New Art, held at London’s Hayward
Gallery in 1972. Richard Long’s work has also been
frequently shown in group exhibitions, which show-
case different approaches to topography and tempor-
ality (for exampleTime, Place, Space: Richard Long,
On Kawara, Lawrence Weinerat the Galerie Ghi-
slaine Hussenot, Paris in 1990) or which seek to
align him to the Earth Art movement, such asMagi-
ciens de la Terre, held at the Centre Georges Pompi-
dou, Paris, in 1988.
Establishing a clear line of influence upon
Richard Long’s art or attaching him to art move-
ments is a task that yields inconclusive results. This
is partly explained by the artist’s reticence to say
much on the subjects but also because movements
such as Earth Art (making art in, and of, the land-
scape—a movement alternatively know as Land
Art) or art practices associated with the production
of series or with the combination of image and text,
offer only partial insights into a working method
thatde factois the work, and which is pursued alone
and independently. Long, however, is on record for
admiring, at an early stage in his career, avant-garde
composer and artist John Cage’s use of pace, time,
and rhythm in works such asIndeterminacy.More
recently, he has expressed a liking for the work of
some of his contemporaries, including American
conceptualist Lawrence Weiner. Long also links
himself to a long cultural history of walking that
includes practices of religious pilgrims and wander-
ing Japanese poets. Because he uses potent and uni-
versal symbolic forms in his work such as straight
lines, spirals, and circles, Long has frequently been
viewed as part of the ancient tradition of construct-
ing ritual earthworks, as well as being seen to be
conceptually attuned to the mysticism of both Zen
Buddhism and Shinto. He has incorporated ‘‘musi-
cal whispers’’ drawn from the popular music (for
example, Bob Dylan’sYou Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere)in
the titling of some of his pieces and in some text-
works. His own admirers range widely across the
creative arts and include musician and producer Bill
Drummond of KLF, as well as numerous visual
artists such as fellow British conceptualist Hamish
Fulton, an occasional walking companion for Long.
As it has developed, single or serial photographs
with descriptive titles attached to the photographic
works as texts, have become a key element within
Richard Long’s art. The majority of these photo-
graphs are monochrome prints, but color is used
where it is deemed to add meaning to the work, as
is the case with the 30 different delicate color mod-
ulations that form the seriesNo Where: A Walk of
131 Miles Within An Imaginary Circle In The Mon-
adhliath Mountainsof 1993. Camera technology is
kept simple and straightforward with a preference
for the Nikkormat camera.
Photography is important to Long because the
speed of execution inherent in the medium allows
transient impressions to be registered and also
because photography offers the artist yet another
form of physical engagement with the world. This
latter consideration is an important factor for an
artist for whom the idea of touch has been used
literally and metaphorically in the form of walking,
as well as in the making of landscape artworks,
which combine natural materials and the elements.
In the process of making work, these mediations
with nature take many different forms in works,
which are sometimes created near to home but fre-
quently in far distant, sometimes geographically
remote, locations. They include the surface indenta-
tions made into the earth by walking, which were
photographed forA2^1 = 2 Mile Walk Sculptureof
1969; the stones thrown in a circle photographed
forThrowing Stones Into A Circleof 1979; and the
artist’s body impression, which was photographed
forSleeping Place Markof 1990. Such photographs
of works made on site are viewed by the artist to be
‘‘the appropriate way for that place to become art in
the public knowledge’’ and therefore to reach an
audience (Giezen 1985, 3).
Photographs appear in Long’s gallery exhibi-
tions and publications as a means of bringing the
work to an audience but, at the same time, they are
also intended to function in their own right and are
not mere ‘‘copies’’ of what might be experienced
when apprehending the artist’s sculpturesin situ.
This distancing from the simplistic idea that what is
shown in a gallery replicates what would beLONG, RICHARD