Chris Walker grew up on a small farm outside rural Croswell, Michigan, where his parents instilled in him a near-reverent appreciation for the land and its natural inhabitants. Today we find in Chris a rare blend of artist and journalist with deep concerns for social anthropology and our ever-changing environment.

     Chris has photographed for clients ranging from The Associated Press and The New York Times to Scientific American, Inc. and Camping Life magazine, where he was the photography columnist for five years. In 1995, the Ernst Haas Awards named him to their annual list of the world’s top 100 emerging photographers.

     Walker served five years as a general assignment photographer for The Blade in Toledo, Ohio, where he covered assignments ranging from hostage situations and food illustrations to professional sports and the epoch spring movement of sandhill cranes along Nebraska’s Platte River. As a photojournalist, he was part of a three-person team that earned a finalist spot for Investigative Reporting in the 2000 Pulitzers.

     Chris left The Blade in 1998 to pursue a Master of Fine Arts in photography at Southern Illinois University—the second step of a long-term plan to teach at the university level. Since receiving his MFA, he’s taught part and full time for eight different colleges and universities. In conjunction with his commitment to education, Walker works as a long-term documentarian and is currently gearing up for the 28th season of his Six Nights a Year project.

     Recently he was invited to participate in the Berlin Biennial of Fine Art and Documentary Photography this fall in Germany, and last summer Chris had two portfolios place in the UK’s 7th Annual Pollux Awards—one as a runner up, one as a finalist. His website is on The New York Times’ “Most Provocative Websites” list, and in the past few years he’s been highlighted in photography textbooks such as Light and Lens: Photography in the Digital Age (Hirsch); Artificial Lighting for Photography: Studio and Location, Film and Digital (McKenzie and Overturf); and he edited, illustrated, and contributed copy to a chapter in Multimedia Foundations: Core Concepts for Digital Design (Costello and Youngblood). In more public forums, Chris has had the cover and six pages in VisCom Quarterly; 14 pages in Silvershotz, The International Journal of Fine Art Photography (Australia and Great Britain); and 10 pages in Photo ART, Contemporary (Thailand).

     Chris currently lives in Fargo, North Dakota, and is an Assistant Professor – across the Red River – at Minnesota State University Moorhead.

     —Robert Shapiro