Richard Long: Sydamerika, 1972: Home

Sydamerika is a reprint of Richard Long’s third book, South America. Unique because of its square shape, it shows drawings made by the artist: a small number of stylized motifs (sun circle, silhouette of a condor, spiral, etc) that were drawn during a hike across South American with natural materials found onsite (pebbles, gold dust, etc) under circumstances that a short legend describes. These sketches are printed twice, once in positive (black on white) and once in negative (white on black), on the front and back of the same page. A connection is thus established between the drawings and photographic prints, by alluding to positive and negative images.