Hamish Fulton (British, born 1946) Touching By Hand One Hundred Rocks (Fifty Three, Fifty Four, Sixty), 1989 Black-and-white photographs, 46 x 54 1/4" each James G. Forsyth and Elisabeth H. Gates Funds, 1991

Hamish Fulton’s art takes its form as walks in the landscape. In the past twenty years, he has covered more than 12,000 miles on five continents. The photographs and text he exhibits in galleries and museums are simply objects, intended to bring his own experience within nature to viewers of his art. Fulton’s philosophy is "no walk, no work." Thus, each object is based directly on a specific journey.

During a walk, Fulton takes photographs to convey the essence of his journey. Since the walk for him is a spiritual experience, and taking pictures intrudes on the intimate relationship that exists between himself and nature, he does not take numerous photographs. Rather, he carefully chooses images he feels will capture most successfully his own experience of the walk. Fulton does not consider himself a photographer. He uses a very simple camera, and only one filter (orange, to help bring out the contrasts more effectively). He does not develop the photographs himself, but entrusts them to a printer in London with whom he has worked for many years.

Notes in a journal taken during each journey help to provide the text for the objects he later creates. Both the photograph and the text are equally important to the image. While the text could stand by itself (Fulton has created "images" that are made up of words alone), a photograph would not be adequate independently.

In this work, the three photographs show a desolate yet beautiful landscape with no signs of human presence. The weather-beaten rocks serve as a foreground for panoramic views of the surrounding countryside, and small, scrubby vegetation provides the only organic life. The text informs us that Fulton was on Hokkaido, the northernmost island of Japan, on a journey that involved seven days walking and seven days camping. He made the trip in June 1989, and at some point during his journey, he saw a full moon. Another aspect of the walk is provided by the title: he touched 100 rocks along the way. These photographs show the fifty-third, fifty-fourth, and sixtieth rocks that he touched.

Fulton successfully manages to distill a seven-day experience into a few key words and images. In this work, there are also additional, more subtle, elements that reflect the location of his walk. The choice of red is significant. Red is an auspicious color in many Asian countries, and it is often combined with black and white in Japanese art. The simple wooden frames reflect many Japanese wooden structures, and Fulton signed his name as Japanese symbols surrounded by a circle. This signature can be found at the bottom center of all three segments of the work and relates to the signature emblems used for centuries by Japanese painters and printmakers.

— Mariann Smith and Nancy Spector

SUGGESTIONS FOR HANDS-ON ACTIVITIES AND DISCUSSION

• Assign the students the task of finding twenty things in their environment at home, either outside or inside, that will always be there. Have them make a list of those things. After the list is complete, have the students touch all the things in one day. Then have them draw their own maps of where the things are and the path they took while doing their touchings.
• Collect one hundred of the same things—rocks, twigs, leaves, seeds, dried flowers, cereal boxes, blades of grass, etc. Have each student bring some to class. Arrange the hundred objects in your classroom. You could number them. Have another class come in and find them all!
• Ask students to remember a special trip they have taken. Then have them create a work of art combining their own drawn or painted images with words cut from magazines to summarize their experience.
• Activity number 3 could also be done using Polaroid photographs of areas around the school, city, etc.