A Walking Sculpture in Two Parts, with Cattle Tracks, Luccombe Bottom, England

Richard Long

1970 · Gelatin silver print · Photographs

With their intimate scale and satisfying physicality, these 12 photographs by Richard Long reward attention in a way akin to the original aesthetic experience of seeing his sculpture on site and firsthand. Photography was crucial, of course, in recasting the idea of sculpture in the 1960s, as the idea of portable, salable art objects came under attack by the countercultural generation of Minimal and Postminimal sculptors. And in that spirit, Long early on coined the term "Public Freehold" to designate his ephemeral interventions in the landscape as "independent of ownership—just out there." He then began to apply that term to his own photographs of his sculpture. The "Public Freehold" prints represent the source images from which prints for exhibition or more frequently reproduction would be made.

Artist

Richard Long

Date

1970

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Gift of the artist and Angela K. Westwater, 2018