Residency fellow Ernie Kroeger gives a talk, A field of walking. Some images from the well trodden path. Other images from the beginnings of photography are new to me. Ernie jigs on top of mountains. Amate map from 17th century Mexico with ghostly footprints across the skin. Herman de Vries does a work Sanctuaire de Roche-rousse in Hautes provence in 2001. de Vries quotes Gussendi — a contemporary of Descartes — ambulo ergo sum — in gold lettering scored into rocks. The idea of the artist researcher. Thinking and moving. Parkour and free running. Solnit mentioning walkology. Hamish Fulton is coming to the course for a guest lecture. Long’s A line made by walking is as old as me! The shadows of Hamish and Janet Cardiff over Banff walking. New book Psychogeography by Merlin Coverly. Being unable to walk. Marey. William Kentridge The procession (2000). Refugee walking. Henri Cartier Bresson: “do you know what a photographer is made up of? One finger, one eye, and two legs….how I got fit” — need to get the full quote. Lee Frielander’s pictures with his shadow.
The street photographer. The magic of early photography evaporating people in the streets due to long exposures. Atget. Who buys the shoes? Where will they walk. Bilocation = two places at the same time. Photographing random pedestrians Walker Evans – they are in one space but clearly (their thoughts) are elsewhere. Bachelard The poetics of space the hill he used to walk up. The man who walked around his room (Xavier de Maistre???) in the Alain de Botton book about travel. An image of amputated limbs from the American Civil War of 1865. The Abramovic Ulay walk Great Wall walk/The lovers 1988 after the romance is over. Walking to meet someone. Walking to imagine. Thomas Hardy and walking 14 miles to meet a lover.
Pedestrianism of the 1870s and 1880s. Long distant walking as a pastime and Madame Ada Anderson. The spectacle of walking. Sylvain Dornon walking from Paris to Moscow on stilts in 1891. Dixon crossing Niagara. The goldrushes amazing image of walking across a snowy pass. Chilkoot Pass Eric Hegg 1898. Weren’t allowed across the pass unless could demonstrate enough supplies so walked numerous loads up the pass. Rodney Graham City self/Country self (2000). The connection of the rural and the urban. Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide Keeper of the roads (1995). Geographer J B Jackson: roads no longer merely lead to places; they are places.
Tracing lineages: Poe’s The man in the crowd, Baudelaire, Breton, Debord, De Certeau.
Pavements have no tracks.The Leak by Alÿs (1995). Roadsworthy (Peter Gibson) Montreal 2001-2006 night actions. Zipper road and shoe zebra crossing. Somewhere possibly Portland a pedestrian memorial zebra crossing made up of the names of pedestrians killed.
RIka Noguchi faint body in the mist A Prime # 14 Mount Fuji (?) (1999)
Other things: mazes, text poems, labyrinth, death marches (Sandakan), drumming to march; reminds me of that Radio National program about the family that walked out of Burma during WWII with only one survivor; obesity and public health; protest walking; crowd behaviour; flash mobbing; geocaching; walking meditations being present in the moment: The purpose is not to arrive but to be present. Sophe Calle and the private detective; animal paths and indian file. National Parks as sites of colonialism with absence of Aboriginal trails. Banff the town of animals streets with Elk filing through as the only animal. Naming the town after what used to be. Is Tunnel Mountain (without a Tunnel) a sleeping buffalo or is this just a white man’s story?
Ernie’s walk to the cemetery
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first photo of a mule deer (at the Banff Centre).