Christian Walker

Christian Walker (American, b. 1953 Springfield, MA – d. 2003 Seattle, WA) was a groundbreaking Black gay photographer active in Boston and Atlanta from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s. His photographs, critical writings, and curatorial projects are vital contributions to the histories of art and photography of the 20th century. In 1974, Walker moved to Boston where he spent the next ten years residing primarily in the South End. After graduating from the School of Fine Arts, Boston, MA in 1983, he participated in several Boston-area solo and group exhibitions and wrote art criticism for gay publications Fag Rag, Amethyst, and SF Camerawork Quarterly. His early photography was influenced by activism within his own community, first via documentary photography and portraiture which eventually led to his acclaimed series The Theater Project which was first exhibited at C.A.G.E. Gallery, Boston in 1983.

In 1985, Walker relocated to Atlanta after being offered a residency at Nexus Contemporary Art Center, Atlanta, GA to publish an artist book of The Theater Project images. His work transitioned to include creative photographic techniques such as multiple exposures, archival appropriation, and integration of paint and nontraditional materials. During his Atlanta years, the artist was included in numerous important group exhibitions, including Black Photographers Bear Witness: One Hundred Years of Social Protest curated by Deborah Willis (1989); The Subject is AIDS (1989) one of the first exhibitions to focus on AIDS crisis and art; a two-person exhibition with Carrie Mae Weems on occasion of the National Black Arts Festival in Atlanta (1992), and Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary American Art curated by Thelma Golden at the Whitney Museum (1994), among many others. Jackson Fine Art represented Walker’s photographer during this time and his series Mule Tales was featured in a solo exhibition in 1992. Walker received several grants for his projects in the mid-1980s and early 1990s, including a Visual Arts Fellowship for Photography from the NEA (National Endowment of the Arts) in 1990. He was also a prolific writer with his criticism and photography published in Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Art Papers, including interviews with Andres Serrano (1991) and Mary Ellen Mark (1992).

In the mid-1990s Walker relocated to Seattle and little is known about his work and life during that period until his untimely death in 2003. Despite receiving substantial critical and curatorial acclaim during his lifetime, Walker's work had largely remained unrecognized until curators Noam Parness and Jackson Davidow created a comprehensive exploration of Walker's oeuvre in Christian Walker: The Profane and the Poignant. The exhibition debuted at the Leslie-Lohman Museum, New York, NY (2023) and traveled to Walker’s alma mater, Tufts University Gallery at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA (2024) and is slated to travel to Atlanta Contemporary Art Center in early 2025.

Walker’s work is included in the collections of The Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, AZ; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX; Hammonds House Museum, Atlanta, GA; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Georgia, Atlanta, GA; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York, NY; and The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY.