Ambulo Ergo Sum: Nature as Experience in Artist's Books

For the Conceptual and Land artists of the 1960s, nature ceased to be an object of representation. Instead, these artists developed a relationship to nature that was driven by conceptual, literary or scientific concerns, while other artists, such as Richard Long and Hamish Fulton, sought ways of establishing a more active relationship with the landscape, most famously through the experience of walking. It is perhaps unsurprising that such a solitary and ephemeral experience gave birth to a number of artists' books whose aim was to preserve this act. Such publications encounter interesting problems of book composition: how to share the intimacy of the experience with the reader? Here, artist's book scholar Anne Moeglin-Delcroix examines the innovative treatment of landscape and nature in artist's books by the generation of the 1960s--Long, Fulton, Herman de Vries and others.