Trail Markers

Nancy Holt
1969
Dartmoor, England
Photo-series of 20 archival inkjet prints from original 126 format slides
18 x 18 in. (46 x 46 cm)

A series of twenty photographs captured along the high moor of Dartmoor National Park in England, ​Trail Markers d​ocuments a subjective journey through the historic landscape. The camera angle is trained downwards, with each photograph featuring an orange mark—inviting us to assume the visual perspective of a traveler in pursuit of our path. Holt resists the panoramic, all-encompassing view, offering instead an experience of the landscape that is at once dynamic and myopic. The orange markers—created as a guide for hikers—highlight a human construct within a vast natural expanse, an insertion that guides our view even as it appears feeble in the context of its majestic surrounds.

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