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Overview
"An aggressively bright yellow taxi hopes to catch the attention of a harassed city dweller...A vividly red truck passes at first glance for a child's toy...A window display of theatrical complexity suggests a microcosm of the metropolis itself...Grafitti-splattered 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 megalopolis, in all its crazy colour, its dissonance and chaos." 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 small, insignificant actions demand competitiveness and creativity. The photographer records these instants with an eye for the odd and the absurd, but not without tenderness for the individual caught up in the city's complex machinery. Witty juxtapositions of the real and the unreal - the sign, the illusion, the simulacrum - force us to question our understanding of the city. The 'real' city, Walker seems to be saying, is as much image as concrete, glass, steel and living flesh.Synopsis
"An aggressively bright yellow taxi hopes to catch the attention of a harassed city dweller...A vividly red truck passes at first glance for a child's toy...A window display of theatrical complexity suggests a microcosm of the metropolis itself...Grafitti-splattered 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 megalopolis, in all its crazy colour, its dissonance and chaos." 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 small, insignificant actions demand competitiveness and creativity. The photographer records these instants with an eye for the odd and the absurd, but not without tenderness for the individual caught up in the city's complex machinery. Witty juxtapositions of the real and the unreal - the sign, the illusion, the simulacrum - force us to question our understanding of the city. The 'real' city, Walker seems to be saying, is as much image as concrete, glass, steel and living flesh.