Robert Walker. Colour is power

An aggressively bright yellow taxi hopes to catch the attention of a harassed city dweller…A window display of theatrical complexity suggests a microcosm of the metropolis itself…Graffiti-spattered walls and vehicles might well be confused with the bright frames of comic-books…These are the targets of Robert Walker’s extraordinary photography – the contemporary, universal meglopolis, in all its crazy colour, its dissonance and chaos. Robert Walker’s world is one in which mundane activities take on the character of inexplicable urban rites and quasi-mythic struggles. Using the phone, crossing the street, holding one’s own on the busy pavement: such insignificant actions demand competitiveness and creativity. The photographer records these instants with an eye for the odd and the absurd, but not without empathy for the individual caught up in the city’s complex machinery. His witty blurring of the real and unreal – the sign, the illusion, the simulacrum, ultimately the dream – forces us to question our understanding of the city. The actual city, Walker seems to be saying, is as much image as glass, concrete, steel and living flesh. Walker’s introduction to this book gives the background to these pictures. He has been wandering in the cities of North America and Europe for over 25 years, ready to snatch that split-second conjunction of form, colour and motion. He participates in the long tradition of street photography which both celebrates the vibrancy of big city life and critiques its wear and tear on the citizen. His images speak of the bigger picture of urban experience – the lives we share, happily or otherwise, in New York, London, Paris, Rio and Rome.\n\nRobert Walker was born in Montreal, where he studied painting at Concordia University. In the mid-1970s, he developed a keen interest in street photography, moving to New York City in 1978. His first book, New York Inside Out, was published in 1984. The photographer has exhibited widely in the United States, Canada and Europe. His images have appeared in many prestigious journals and books.