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ABSTRACT
In April 1969. Robert Smithson, accompanied by his wife, artist Nancy Holt, and gallery director Virginia Holt, traveled in the Yucatan by car (and plane and dugout) visiting Mayan sites first documented by John Lloyd Stephens in 1839/42. Smithson placed mirrors in patterns at various sites and photographed them. The resulting essay with 14 photographs — “Incidents of Mirror-Travel in the Yucatan” — was published by Artforum in Sept 1969. Smithson was to die in a plane crash in 1973. In May 2005, David Wood, accompanied and assisted by Beth Conklin, recreated much of Smithson's Yucatan project and itinerary. What is offered here is a different ‘take’ on the experience, implicitly contesting many of Smithson's aesthetic and political choices, reanimating tensions within his own thought, and opening up the world in a different way — the best kind of homage, even to an artist. There are nine new pairs of photographs, two for each site of mirror displacement. Plus two extras.