Chris Walker (http://www.chriswalkerphoto.com) grew up on a small farm near the rural community of Croswell, Michigan where his parents instilled in him a near-reverent appreciation for the land and its natural inhabitants.  Today we find in Chris a rare blend of artist and journalist with deep concerns for social anthropology and our ever-changing environment.

He has photographed for clients ranging from The Associated Press and The New York Times to Scientific American, Inc., and Camping Life magazine, where he was their regular photography columnist for five years.

In 2000, Chris and two co-workers from The (Toledo, Ohio) Blade were Pulitzer finalists for a story exposing a government cover-up responsible for the ongoing deaths of 8% of a company’s workforce; in addition to golf clubs and sunglasses, the hazardous material the company manufactures is utilized in missile cones.

In 1995, the Ernst Haas Awards named Chris to their annual list of the world’s top 100 emerging photographers for his “Six Nights a Year” project.

Chris’ solo exhibitions include “Six Nights a Year”, a social documentary exploring the coming of age for rural Midwesterners under the lights of the region’s myriad, rural county fairs, shown first through the Detroit Center for the Arts, Detroit, Michigan; “Spiritual Extractions,” a collection of landscape details, shown first through the Franciscan Life Center, Sylvania, Ohio; and “Civil Twilight”, a work in progress examining 19th-century grain elevators as icons of socioeconomic evolution in rural America, shown first at Gallery HQ in Carbondale, Illinois.

His group exhibition acceptances include showings at the Toledo Museum of Art; the Toledo Friends of Photography’s National Juried Exhibition; the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Pittsburgh; the Society for Contemporary Photography, Kansas City; and California State, Chico’s Museum of Anthropology, among others.  Other significant winnings include numerous first-place awards in contests sponsored by the Outdoor Writers Association of America, Ohio News Photographers Association, and the Outdoor Writers of Ohio.  He has been published in Light and Lens: Photography in the Digital Age, by photo historian and author Robert Hirsch, and in Artificial Lighting for Photography: Studio & Location, Film & Digital, by Joy McKenzie and Daniel Overturf.

Walker served two years with Gannett newspapers before working five years as a correspondent for the Associated Press, followed by another five years as a general assignment photographer for The Blade in Toledo, where he covered assignments ranging from hostage situations and food illustrations to professional sports and the epoch spring movement of sandhill cranes along the Platte River in Nebraska.

Chris left The Blade in 1998 to pursue a Master of Fine Arts in photography.  After receiving his degree, he taught as an adjunct for several institutions before joining the faculty at Auburn University as an assistant professor, teaching in the Department of Communication and Journalism.

Bob Shapiro, Curator
Tribecca Gallery
Paducah, Kentucky