Traces
(2018)
Traces is a series of eleven digital photographs that document the carrots consumed on a solo journey on foot between Geneva and Paris, undertaken in June 2018.
In June 2018, I walked from Geneva to Paris.
I walked to travel between one artistic project and another.
I walked because I wanted to know how such a journey would resonate in body, mind and spirit.
I walked in resistance to the notion that women should not walk alone.
I walked to work.
The eighteen day journey traversed the Jura massive, passed through wheatfields, vineyards and forests, then traced the curves of the Seine river from its source to the Parisian suburbs. During the walk I experimented with different acts of mark making and documentation, searching for ways to record the ephemeral traces that my body left in moving through the landscape, and the marks that the journey inscribed on my body. I collected my blister fluids, tears and sticking plasters, and experimented with photographic documentation of my daily snacking habits.
Each time I stopped to eat a carrot on the walk I took a digital photograph of the leftover carrot top in the location where it was consumed. In this series of images, the carrot top re-appears in each frame as both a record of an action in the landscape, and as a substitution for my body and the figure of the artist. The series makes a playful reference to the work of ‘land artists’ such as Richard Long, in which the artist’s passage through the landscape is staged through the photographic documentation of improvised sculptures made from materials found in-situ. Traces is displayed as a looping digital slideshow, linking to conventional practices and presentation formats of tourist photography. In this approach, the photographs are both travel souvenirs and documentation of an ephemeral intervention in the landscape.