Christian Walker
(1953–2003)Christian Walker created experimental work meditating on queer sexualities, race, representation, public space—and all their convergences.
Biography
Walker, a Black gay photographer, captured communities and spaces in Boston and Atlanta within which he lived and worked from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s.
Born in Springfield, Massachusetts, Walker moved to Boston in 1974, where he began taking photographs. Walker attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University, graduating in 1984. He then moved to Atlanta, where he continued his photography practice. In 1985, he published a photo book, The Theater Project. Around this time, in the mid-1980s, his work shifted from more traditional portrait and documentary photography to alternative photographic processes that included the use of paint, oil, ink, and archival images.
Working with socially engaged and political art, in 1990, Walker cocurated Against the Tide: Art in the Age of AIDS and Censorship with sociologist and historian Cindy Patton. In addition to his photography practice, Walker wrote extensively on art as a critic. Walker participated in exhibitions at the Studio Museum in Harlem including The Decade Show: Frameworks of Identity in the 1980s (1990) and Constructed Images: New Photography (1989). Alongside the Studio Museum, Walker’s work has been exhibited at the High Museum, the Leslie-Lohman Museum, the New Museum, the Tufts University Art Galleries, Williams College Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. His work is held in the collections of Atlanta’s Hammonds House Museum, the High Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Georgia. Walker’s work entered the Studio Museum’s permanent collection in 2012.
Christian Walker
(1953–2003)Christian Walker created experimental work meditating on queer sexualities, race, representation, public space—and all their convergences.
Miscegenation Series, 1985-1988
Biography
Walker, a Black gay photographer, captured communities and spaces in Boston and Atlanta within which he lived and worked from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s.
Born in Springfield, Massachusetts, Walker moved to Boston in 1974, where he began taking photographs. Walker attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University, graduating in 1984. He then moved to Atlanta, where he continued his photography practice. In 1985, he published a photo book, The Theater Project. Around this time, in the mid-1980s, his work shifted from more traditional portrait and documentary photography to alternative photographic processes that included the use of paint, oil, ink, and archival images.
Working with socially engaged and political art, in 1990, Walker cocurated Against the Tide: Art in the Age of AIDS and Censorship with sociologist and historian Cindy Patton. In addition to his photography practice, Walker wrote extensively on art as a critic. Walker participated in exhibitions at the Studio Museum in Harlem including The Decade Show: Frameworks of Identity in the 1980s (1990) and Constructed Images: New Photography (1989). Alongside the Studio Museum, Walker’s work has been exhibited at the High Museum, the Leslie-Lohman Museum, the New Museum, the Tufts University Art Galleries, Williams College Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. His work is held in the collections of Atlanta’s Hammonds House Museum, the High Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Georgia. Walker’s work entered the Studio Museum’s permanent collection in 2012.