Catalog Description of 

Riding South

Letterpress Edition

 

by
Michael Andrews

A six month motorcycle ride from Los Angeles to Peru, 1979; the Nicaraguan war, archeological ruins, cocaine dealers & cocaine nights, portraits, dunes, border crossings, crosses, markets, Machu Picchu.

Foreword by Carlos Fuentes.

 

The 11x14 edition has 78 pages, letterpress on Arches watercolor, handset with Centaur and Albertus. Including 29 pigment prints, loose leaf in linen binding with cover image in recessed window. The standard slipcase is made of various woods: Pine, Fir, Redwood, Cedar, Poplar For an additional $50.00  Oak, Mahogany or Maple may be ordered. For an additional $100.00 Rosewood, Teak, Walnut, Cherry, Padouk or Cocobolo may be ordered. The window is clear glass.

Limited to 17 copies.

 

The 20x24 edition, limited to 7 copies, has 80 pages, many folded folio, letterpress on Arches watercolor & 29 pigment prints, loose leaf in linen portfolio box with cover label pasted into recess. Individual prints are available in various sizes.

 

Michael Andrews rides South on his Yamaha XT500 from Los Angeles to Lima. The East and the West are "Far": Death Valley of the Far West, where the cameras of Von Stroheim and Antonioni came to cold halt; Hiroshima, of the Far East, where no camera could survive the blast of light. You are driving away from the North; the North is heartless, barren, not far, just empty and lost. The Aztecs imagined it as a white hell. But the South is "Deep". You do not go to it, but inside it. You do not go away to it, you drive into it. The South is a hole: vagina, anus, mouth, grave, an eye, an ear. The South is a wound that does not heal, like the red brooms, the red trees, the red candy apples, the red peppers, the red walls Michael Andrews sees but burrows into, with his camera, with his Yamaha, in Morelia, Los Mochis, San Cristobal, San Juan del Sur.    

Here Michael Andrews drives with his camera and his motorcycle into the very soul of the soul of his depth. The South of the South: what madness, what hallucinations, what flashes of color and crime, of pity and anger, red and green as peppers and flags, to redeem the image of the Latin and the Indian South, the thirst for sin of the Anglo-Saxon and African South of the United States.    

They rode South and met the baroque hunger of the void, the thunderous silence of Montezuma's golden chamber and Pizarro's iron cross.    

In this great photograph taken in Toluca, Michael Andrews permits us to imagine Ucello's battles as they overflow the space of the mural and spill over into the Umbrian countryside. A moment frozen in time. A moment, also, liberated from time (a photograph, a painting) or even liberating time as it encapsules it?    

... a perpetual mutation of moving flesh, figures in rapid movement, brought to an imaginary death by the camera, stilled by the camera and yet granted life by that same murderous weapon.                                                                                  

                                                                          From the Foreword by Carlos Fuentes