Study for Actual Size (Munich Depression)

In 1969, at the invitation of Munich gallery owner Heiner Friedrich, sculptor Michael Heizer drove a backhoe to dig a pit more than 30 meters in diameter: geometry writ large on the landscape. As an extension of the work, called Munich Depression, Heizer took 360-degree photographs of the 7,000-square-foot pit and used them to prepare a gigantic slide piece, called Actual Size—a 1:1 virtual recreation of Munich Depression that brought his outdoor intervention into an exhibition space. “I think certain photographs offer a precise way of seeing works,” he said as he was preparing this photo work. “You can take a photograph into a clean white room, with no sound, no noise. You can . . . possibly experience to a greater depth whatever view you have been presented with.”