The Walk as Work

In 1985, Hamish Fulton walked for eight days in central Saskatchewan, near Ajawaan Lake. The work begins there.

This episode stays with a simple shift that takes time to register. The photographs are not the work. They follow it. What we encounter comes after a movement that has already unfolded, step by step, across distance and time.

Fulton’s practice emerges at a moment when art moves beyond the object, opening toward action, duration, and presence. Walking becomes a form in itself, shaped by rhythm, repetition, and the body moving through space without leaving a trace behind.

What remains are fragments. Images, sequences, words that hold something of that experience without ever reconstructing it.

As the work unfolds in one of its forms, the leporello extending outward image by image, something begins to change. What remains from the walk takes shape here as sequence, as structure, as a movement held on paper. The act of looking slows down, drawn along its length, following rather than stopping.

Episode 15 reflects on that movement, and on how walking can be understood not as a means to reach something, but as something that already holds its own form.

Images, references, and links are available at
photographyandwalking.com

En 1985, Hamish Fulton a marché pendant huit jours dans le centre de la Saskatchewan, près du Ajawaan Lake. L’œuvre commence là.

Cet épisode s’attarde à un déplacement simple qui demande du temps pour être perçu. Les photographies ne sont pas l’œuvre. Elles la suivent. Ce que nous rencontrons vient après un mouvement qui s’est déjà déployé, pas à pas, à travers la distance et le temps.

La pratique de Fulton émerge à un moment où l’art dépasse l’objet, s’ouvrant vers l’action, la durée et la présence. Marcher devient une forme en soi, façonnée par le rythme, la répétition et le corps en mouvement dans l’espace, sans laisser de trace.

Ce qui demeure prend la forme de fragments. Des images, des séquences, des mots qui retiennent quelque chose de cette expérience sans jamais la reconstituer.

Lorsque l’œuvre se déploie dans l’une de ses formes, le leporello s’étendant image après image, quelque chose commence à changer. Ce qui reste de la marche prend ici la forme d’une séquence, d’une structure, d’un mouvement inscrit sur le papier. Le regard ralentit, entraîné le long de son déploiement, avançant plutôt que s’arrêtant.

L’épisode 15 réfléchit à ce mouvement, et à la manière dont la marche peut être comprise non pas comme un moyen d’atteindre quelque chose, mais comme quelque chose qui porte déjà sa propre forme.

Images, références et liens disponibles sur :
photographyandwalking.com

—
Music: Beat ’em with Rhythm - Victor Natas (CC BY 4.0 / freesound.org)

Produced by Productions 3655 Inc.   

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Saskatchewan A1 Lake Hamish Fulton walked here for eight days, and in his work, that walk itself is the artwork. So you're looking at a work by Hamish Fulton. It takes the form of a long, folded photographic sequence, what's known as a leperello. A shoreline, low trees, water stretching outward, then ground again, dry, textured, uneven. And as the images follow one another in a line, sometimes across a page, sometimes unfolding across a table, they begin to form a kind of extended strip that keeps moving forward. You open it and it continues. One image, then another, then another, and at first it feels familiar, like a landscape photograph, maybe arranged in sequence, but very quickly something begins to shift, because what you're seeing is not where the work begins. Here the photographs come after, and the work is the walk. That sentence is simple, but it takes time to settle, because it asks us to adjust something fundamental in how we encounter art, which we're used to finding in front of us, held in place waiting. Here the work has already taken place. Eight days in central Saskatchewan in Canada, walking step after step across ground that never fully repeats itself, even when it seems to, with the body moving forward as weather shifts and light changes across the same stretch of land, so that what unfolds is not a single moment, but a duration that accumulates. That duration, that movement through space and time, is the work. The walk itself. And what comes later, the photos, the folded leperello, the occasional texts remain tied to it. This way of working emerged at a moment when art itself began opening outward, and by the late 1960s, the object no longer defined the limits, as artists began to work with ideas, with actions, with time. For Hamish Fulton and for another British artist, Richard Long, walking became a way forward, and both played a central role in establishing walking as a form of art in its own right. They both studied at St. Martin's School of Art in London, in the sculpture department, and that context matters, because it situates their work within a way of thinking about space, volume, and the body moving through the world. Richard Long's work often takes the form of walks that result in visible interventions, lines traced into the ground by repeated steps, circles formed with stones, arrangements that remain in the landscape or are later presented in galleries, making the walk both an action and something that leaves a mark. Fulton moves in another direction, and while the walk remains central, it unfolds without that kind of visible intervention, so that when the walk ends, the landscape continues as it was. So when Fulton walks, he is already working in three dimensions, across terrain, through distance, within space. And what comes later, photographs, text, printed formats are flat, sitting on paper, on walls, on pages, as two dimensional surfaces holding something that unfolded before with walking in space. In this particular work, that tension becomes visible, especially in the form Fulton uses the leperello, an accordion fold book that you hold in your hands, and begin to open, and as it unfolds it extends outward, section by section, occupying space in front of you. It doesn't stay contained like a single page, and instead it moves outward, so that when you place it on a table and let it unfold, something starts to happen, as the object itself starts to echo the walk, stretching, advancing, carrying you forward. It remains something that comes after, but its form begins to resonate with the act itself, as a movement translated into a structure that you can hold. And this remains true across different forms, because the same walk can appear as a leperello unfolding across a table, across several pages in a catalog, or on a wall in an exhibition space, while the walk itself remains constant. And what changes is the way that duration is held afterward. So if we stay with the pictures themselves, something else becomes clear, because each photograph remains precise, holding a shoreline at a particular moment, a shift in light across the water, the ground as the artist walks, dry or marked by subtle variations, and in doing so it doesn't try to capture everything, but stays with fragments. That fragment quality matters, because the walk itself never breaks into fragments, and instead continues over eight days. It's physical, and it unfolds through rhythm, through repetition, through the body adjusting to distance and fatigue, sometimes narrowing attention to the ground directly ahead, sometimes opening outward toward the horizon. Nothing here isolates itself as a central event, and instead it accumulates, and when Fulton turns to photography, that accumulation can effectively be approached through sequence. Something that has been noted by art historian Andrew Wilson, who points to the recurring use of multiple images to register variations within the same landscape. Here at Iowan Lake, the sequence becomes essential, because one image alone doesn't hold the walk, while the images together begin to suggest something of that duration, even though what we have remains partial. Alongside the photographs, there are words, short and restrained, offering a place name, a duration, a simple marking of what occurred, and rather than expanding into description, they remain close to the fact of the walk, registering, anchoring it, holding a point of contact without moving away from what took place. This approach carries a position in relation to the land itself, as Fulton walks through the landscape, passing without rearranging stones, without tracing lines into the ground, without leaving a visible intervention that remains, so that when the walk ends, the landscape continues. There is also something deeper informing this, because from early on Fulton developed a strong awareness of indigenous relationships to land, particularly during his travels in North America in the late 1960s, where sites such as Little Bighorn in Montana carried a weight that stayed with him, shaping an understanding of land not as material to shape, but as something to move within, to respect, to acknowledge. That awareness doesn't turn into a statement, but instead becomes part of an orientation, a way of walking. So when we return to Iowan Lake, Saskatchewan is not just a location, but part of a larger field of attention, a space with its own presence, its own history, its own scale, and the walk unfolds within that. Try and imagine eight days, distance covered each day, the body finding its rhythm, sometimes steady, almost automatic, sometimes slower, heavier, in the kind of repetition that gradually settles into the body. Years ago I had the opportunity to meet Hamish Fulton on several occasions, and what stayed with me was a particular clarity in the way he spoke about walking, direct and grounded, with no need to enlarge it into something else, and that clarity stayed with me, later becoming part of my own thinking about the relation between photography and walking, about movement as something that exists fully in time before any photograph follows. And when we come back to the leperello, that folded sequence extending outward, something else begins to take shape. Because as you open it and follow the images, moving along its length, something begins to settle quietly, until at a certain point you realize you're walking. Not physically across Saskatchewan, but across the structure in front of you. As your eyes move, your attention shifts, and you follow a path that continues to extend. It would be tempting at this point to connect this experience to a longer history in art, where the artist's relation to landscape often carries an undertone of what's known as the sublime, the figure alone within a vast expanse, absorbed into it. But that reading doesn't quite hold here. Because what Fulton leaves us with is something more direct, more grounded, simply the act of moving forward, step by step through space. And this is where the work lands, because what Fulton places in front of us is not something to stand in front of and observe, but something that reactivates a movement. As the walk took place and has come to an end, yet in encountering what remains, something begins again. A different kind of movement, quieter, slower, internal. And once that shift settles, it doesn't remain with the work alone, but begins to extend into how we understand walking itself, not as a means of getting somewhere, but as something that already holds its own form, its own duration, its own presence. Eight days in Aya One, the walk is complete, and yet in another way it continues.com, and if you'd like to receive occasional notes connected to the episodes, you can leave your email through the contact page on the website at photographyandwalking.com. Thank you for listening and see you next time.