Mountains and Waters

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

British artist Long ( Walking in Circles ) takes nature treks--in England's Lake District, the Sahara, Japan, Nepal--and creates site-specific works along the way. He fashions a mud circle in the river Avon, traces a line of snow near a temple in Kyoto and erects a circle of stones on a Swiss mountainside. The spare, deeply meditative photographs that he took en route sometimes call to mind prehistoric British megalithic monuments or Native American earthworks, as if he wants to tune in on planetary patterns of energy. At other times Long simply records what he sees, providing dramatic vistas of Iceland's vast rolling hills, Bolivia's high plateau, Washington's forests and Mount Everest's calm majesty. His images, poetic captions and unobstrusive siteworks reflect an artist who is at once traveler, nature-lover and adventurer. (Feb.)