"In late 1960 Michael Snow made several naturalist flat cut-out cardboard figures which used the/a wall as their background. In early 1961, to make one of these, he drew - then cut out with a matte knife - a side view of a female figure walking, 152 cm tall, within a drawn rectangle on a piece of cardboard[...]This cut-out was not made for unforeseen uses, but once started, new possibilities continued to occur to the artist. Thus all his work between 1961 and 1967 used the outline or silhouette of the original cut-out as both tool and subject. The original contour was always the same, but depicted in many ways with many mediums: graphite, ink, watercolour, acrylic, enamel, spray paints and oil, on various surfaces : paper, cardboard, canvas, metal, wood, a car door, etc. Many photographic works and films and performance works were made. Collages, frottages, pliages, rolled-works, and three-dimensional pieces in stainless steel, tin, aluminum, wood, plastics, rubber and cloth were made. He also made many "lost works", where compositions using The Walking Woman contour were placed (usually clandestinely) in many locations (site being an aspect of their composition) in Toronto and New York and elsewhere[...]Few of the "lost works" were documented. Ultimately the artist found himself with an incredible archive of photos, mostly made by others, of the almost infinite manifestations of The Walking Woman contour[...]Biographie is a 2004 'The Walking Woman' Work which consists of the juxtaposition and the many-sided sequential ordering of a selection from these deliberate, inadvertent, and by-chance photographic documents..." - publisher's statement. Includes roughly 320 color and 70 black-and-white plates.