Robert Brecko Walker, originally from the San Francisco Bay Area, was born in 1942. He majored in Fine Art and Anthropology at UC Berkeley in the turbulent 1960’s. Among his instructors were Ansel Adams, Harry Callahan and Jack Welpott. After graduation he traveled throughout Europe, North Africa, and North America via Volkswagen Camper with his wife and two-year-old daughter.
Walker relocated to Southern California to attend Art Center College of Design in 1970. While working as a cine-optical technician in the early 70’s, he met and became friends with Max Yavno. Upon Yavno’s recommendation, Walker was hired to lead the photography department at Jerome Gould Design, where he worked on packaging campaigns for clients such as Pepsi, Frito-Lay, and Michelob Beer.
During the next decade Walker became a freelance photographer specializing in product, editorial, and architectural photography. In the early 1990’s he taught briefly at Biola University, then accepted a position at Ace Gallery as Archivist/Photographer. In 1994 he was hired to supervise the Photographic Department at Getty Research Institute, where he stayed until retirement in 2004.
Retirement from commercial work has allowed Walker to recover his early attachment to the medium and rediscover images he has captured over the years. He recalls, “At age eleven, my mother died and my life was tragically altered. A cousin I was sent to live with taught me to process film and make contact prints. I will never forget watching that first image slowly reveal itself in the developer tray. I was hooked. Photography became my memory vault, my shorthand language. A means of safely storing fragments of the precious thing we call life. Learning to express it well became my challenge.
"As a boy, I used to lie on my back in the grass and watch the clouds. They were constantly changing and would morph into interesting worlds minute by minute. I noticed that moving through people and places also revealed wonderful tableaux in time and space. The task was to see and recognize the dynamic elements as a whole, to know exactly when to hit the 'save button' when everything was right.
"Most of my life as a photographer has been spent creating images for others; I was a problem solver and, like a chef, I satisfied the tastes of others. What I shot for myself rarely went beyond the contact print stage. In the last few months, I have discovered several hidden gems that I had long forgotten, many of which have never been printed before.”