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Fire Island Walk West to East 4.30.01 – 5.01.01

By Jeffrey Allen Price

From dawn to dawn, April 30 to May 1, 2001 I walked the entire shoreline of Fire Island, NY from West to East. The 32-mile trek from the Fire Island Inlet to the Moriches Inlet took me approximately 22 hours to complete (including one extended break at Watch Hill and several small ones along the way). A short segment of my journey was documented from a helicopter in the form of aerial video and photography. I also chronicled parts of the walk from my own cameras (digital video and 35mm still) and charted certain landmark points along the way using a Global Positioning System.

The Fire Island Walk Diorama became the gallery artwork. It consisted of six 4’ x 4’ panels in an 18” deep frame, arranged on the wall in 8’ x 12’ configuration. On the panels was painted a two-color map of Fire Island, with small images of me walking, pasted on the island at certain points. I collected many natural objects during the hike, such as crab shells, driftwood, and a dried seahorse, and incorporated them onto, and underneath the Fire Island Walk Diorama.

There were also two video monitors embedded in the Fire Island Walk Diorama, showing footage from JEFF-CAM and HELI-CAM. JEFF-CAM consisted of a one-minute loop of edited video showing images of my feet walking across the sand, and also images of my face. HELI-CAM, also a one-minute loop, played a video of me as seen from the helicopter camera’s perspective.


Fig. 4 HELI-CAM video-still Fig. 5 JEFF-CAM video-still
from Fire Island Walk, 2001. from Fire Island Walk, 2001.


I chose Fire Island as the official starting point of my exploration of Long Island because of the extreme dynamic of the shoreline (the barrier island is constantly being dramatically altered by wind and water) and also because of the amazing beauty and scale (and sound) of the Atlantic Ocean. I was interested in the physicality and endurance involved with Fire Island Walk (it was necessary for me to train) as well as the solitary and meditative aspects of the journey. The name Fire Island itself implies a kind of heat, or transformation process. Other transformations occurred during my walk, such as the transition from April to May, from West to East, and a physical shift from freshness to fatigue.

The aerial documentation of my Fire Island Walk was intended to evoke a "God's Eye Perspective" of the pilgrimage, emphasizing my terrestrial bearing and inherent smallness in the universe. It also functioned as documentation, and a kind of surveillance, which provided proof of the event. My intimate experience walking along Fire Island's seashore, among the horseshoe crabs, piping plover, and other beach dwellers was a meditative, physical and educational experience. It has given me an expanded knowledge of the local landscape and allowed me to better understand my geographical position in the world.