Stills from a Continuous Walk (2024)

One of the primary reasons I enjoy long, exploratory city walks is the new perspectives you encounter, especially when moving through different types of infrastructure.

Being in motion sparks the imagination, keeping my mind engaged and my eyes scanning for interesting perspectives. This sense of soft fascination, where the shifting landscape unfolds in real time, is central to how I experience pedestrian infrastructure during these walks.

Making the videos offers another way of communicating this perspective—capturing the rhythm and movement that shape the experience in a way still images alone cannot.

When I first started exploring urbanism media in 2019, I discovered walking videos on YouTube. These were often hours-long livestreams or recordings of entire walks, created by a handful of dedicated content creators. I found the concept perplexing yet intriguing.

Who would want to watch these for hours? I couldn’t quite connect with the format myself, but I still couldn’t resist trying it. Deep in my archive are a few of these early experiments which will likely be included as part of my full New York Project.

After the process of making this video, I now have new ideas on how I could possibly edit those older videos. It's one of the benefits of working methodically. Every new project informs how you understand your previous work.

Ultimately, recording for more than a few minutes in the field disrupted the act of walking—it pulled me out of the moment and into a space of mediation that wasn’t satisfying. I wanted to stay focused on making photographs instead.

However, I realized I could strike a balance by creating short, simple videos. Using the iPhone and later Pixel, I began capturing 15-second clips while walking on desire paths, which are an ongoing subject for me while navigating the city landscape.

I appreciate their idiosyncratic aesthetic within the landscape but for me, they also reflect the collective wisdom of countless pedestrians who walked them before, intuitively finding the most efficient or enjoyable way to traverse a space.

Recording my walks on these paths felt like a small act of reverence, as well as a way to explore their visual charm. Over time, I expanded the project to include bridges, interesting sidewalks (to nowhere), and other interesting sections of city infrastructure, like the Skyway system in Minneapolis, which I've started to document in photographs as well.

It's a simple project, and I enjoy the ritual of making the short videos. The process of creating the videos and reviewing the archive has introduced a new element of about memory, and as I get older, it makes me smile knowing that I’ve been fortunate enough to experience these of public spaces.

Watching the clips repeatedly feels like a tribute to these locations—or perhaps more like an offering to the infrastructure for continued good vibes. By capturing these "everyday walks," I hope to share a glimpse of the experience of moving through the landscape and highlight the often-overlooked details of the pedestrian experience.

As with many projects, I've used different working titles over the years but for now “continuous walk” has been the title that has stuck. For me, it's both literal and symbolic—a way to imagine walking forever, even beyond the limits of my physical body.

Perhaps this archive is my way of reconciling the inevitable, preparing for a time when I can no longer walk. Or maybe it’s just a way of documenting the joy and perspective I find in each experience, proving to myself and others that these experiences are real.

These days, we make photos and videos of almost everything—it’s become a ritual for just about everyone, each of us motivated by something different. For me, sharing these video glimpses of public spaces is my way of sharing the small moments from my daily existence that I find interesting.

Will you find them interesting? I can’t say for sure. But maybe after reading this and watching the video, the next time you’re out on a walk, a desire path will catch your eye, or a low wall might invite you to balance along it, tightrope-style, even if it feels a bit absurd.

While the pedestrian experience in most cities is far from perfect, there are pockets of wonder and fleeting moments of beauty to be found in the paths we've constructed in the built environment.

During the video editing process, I realized I should extract and share some of the stills. I enjoyed how the timestamp looked alongside the image, adding a layer of context and grounding each frame in time.

As I reviewed the stills, I was struck by their aesthetic quality and how they offered a new way to share the project. Although, I did suffer a bit of creative paralysis at one point as I thought about the numerous ways I could merge the text with the video.

Perhaps in future years, I'll iterate on the idea and see where I can take it, or most likely I'll just use the same template forever.

When I was editing the stills, I knew I was partly inspired by On Kawara’s Today series, in which he painted dates on a regular basis. Like Kawara’s dates, these stills mark time and place, serving as records of movement and my presence in the landscape.

Incorporating these stills has added a photographic element to the project that feels like a natural connection to my other projects, and ongoing inquiry into visualizing the transit networks and the city landscape.

Over the past several years, I’ve thought a lot about how photographs and long, durational walks in the city shape my perception of time. It’s still a mystery, and I doubt I’ll ever fully figure it out, but I’ve always been drawn to how time is represented in print.

With this project, that visual connection finally feels right. Of course, it’s not a novel idea, and I’m already imagining new ways to present it. Improving my design skills is an ongoing challenge—one that can feel uphill at times—but I’ve come to enjoy the process.

Ultimately, this project also serves as a way for me to map and memorialize my experience of time in the city landscape. In 2024, that was Minneapolis which I've learned has a lot of interesting ways of navigating the map on foot.

Now that I've completed the video for 2024, I've started working backwards on the previous years, which are a bit more emotionally complex to tackle since they take me through the pandemic, leaving New York City, then re-locating in my hometown of St. Cloud for a few strange years.

With this project, I've built an initial template and process for the project, so theoretically it should be easier, and going forward I plan to make this a yearly ritual. I probably won't be impressed with the effort unless I make it to 100 years old, then it might synthesize into something worthwhile. Along the way, I'll try to enjoy the process though.

Of course, the ultimate goal is a continuous walk into infinity. But as I move through my 49th year on Earth, I’ll happily settle for several more decades of wandering in a state of perplexed wonder at the built environment.

For now, here are a few more stills from 2024.

I’m an photographer and marketing strategist living in Minneapolis. This is my newsletter on art, walking, urbanism and mindfulness.

Each issue, I share new work from my projects and try to make connections between ideas, articles and people that fascinate me. You can follow me on Instagram.