About the Work
I won a competition for using a Polaroid, and this was the result. I gridded up a section of Hadrians's Wall in Northumberland with cotton. This took most of the day. I intended to record each square with Polaroid photography, moving the camera along as I went. Built together, the Polaroids would become a photographic wall of the real wall.
When I returned the following morning, much of the cotton had been pulled off by sheep sheltering up against the wall during the night. I made some desultory repairs, but the sheep's interference gave my wall a somewhat haphazard quality. I tried to improve the work a little by relocating some of the ancient stones. This was easier than completely regridding the section.
The feet on the right are intended to give the wall scale, and to make a private pun on the Roman emperor's feat in building it so far from home.
Before leaving, I returned his wall to the condition in which I found it.
(Collection: Polaroid, Inc., Cambridge, Massachusetts)
″I still use the same approach to my work: I get an idea, think of the title and then make the work. So not much has changed since 1964″
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