The Grand Canyon South Rim With Rail, Oct 1982

In this 1982 print, a limited edition of 10 and part of the Photo Collages collection of works, much-loved British artist David Hockney photographs a subject he has since returned to in his landscape paintings: the Grand Canyon. Hockney once remarked that this piece proved he had ‘found a way to photograph the Grand Canyon and show its grandeur’; tackling the difficulties of representing ‘one of the biggest spaces you can see’ head on, argued Hockney, meant opting for a more economical approach to image-making. An embodiment of the artist’s nuanced and philosophical approach to photography – an approach which formed the basis of a public lecture given at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London in 1983 – this print saw Hockney stand in one place, moving his camera across the arc of his visual field so as to form a composite panorama. In contrast to other ‘joiner’ images produced in this period, namely Luncheon At The British Embassy, Tokyo, February 16th 1983 (1983), here Hockney’s does not aim to commit others’ movement to the page: rather, the only movement depicted is his own. A visual testament to a time spent looking intently at his objects of study, here Hockney crafts an image of the Grand Canyon which does justice to its enormous size and seemingly infinite level of detail.