Hugh Walker Photography

Me and pictures and life

As a nine year old I remember viewing the steamship Caronia. The green hull was striking. At school the following week, my painting was lampooned – “BOATS DONT HAVE GREEN HULLS”, I was told.

A couple of years later at school, a student art teacher conjured up jungle thoughts . There was no time to finish my painted version, but I still have the feel of it – eyes peeping out through lush vegetation.

Much later, after accumulating a photographic record of the 3 Walker children, I started image making in 2002. I remembered the Bill Brandts I had seen, and discovered Weston, Strand, Walker Evans, and many others. I fiddled around with many different pieces of equipment.

In my work, I found myself looking for abstraction, ambiguity and minimalism.This was there even in the travel and more documentary pieces. Subsequently, I tried to paint some of the images, but found that painting was a very different process.

Latterly, feedback from portfolio review and workshops has shown new directions. Rhubarb Rhubarb sessions were challenging to say the least, John Blakemore comments gentler but more productive.  I  looked for relationships across images. Together with book formats, there was a feeling of authorship.

In 2010, I looked forward to trying some portraiture, more black and white and a return to the discipline of large format. I also wanted to do more work on the human body. And for the last two years, “home” had spread over Glasgow, Hastings and Reus in Spain. It was time to be less nomadic.

It’s October 2011. The need for regular visits to Hastings has gone. I’m just out of hospital after a laparoscopic cholecystectomy and wondering how long recovery will take.It’s been raining in Glasgow for two days! Heatwave in the south.Will I be ready for son Jussi’s wedding in Mexico in November?

Selected Exhibitions