I also wrote on the newspaper in high school and participated in theatre, skateboarded and went to rock shows. We recorded music and played shows around town. But I drew and as I got older I played music, piano and guitar and I played in really bad bands in high school.
I don’t feel like I’ve ever had any proper skill as an artist, at least not in the classic sense. The idea of the artist was really appealing to me, but at the time I understood art-making as something that was much more concerned with a sense of skill and technical accomplishment. I don’t think I understood this then as I do now, but from an early age I always drew and wanted to draw well. I definitely wanted to challenge and add to the cultural landscape. The Rumpus: How would you say your art-making began?īrett Walker: I had always desired to “do something.” Growing up much of what I was exposed to seemed passive the environment I came from and the activities that many people I encountered participated in only seemed to reinforce that passivity.
That several of the images are taken by his friends and family reflects Brett’s reluctance towards a constraining formal body of art, and shows that the practice of capturing life as it happens is all a part of the whole. The honesty in his pursuit is captured in his comprehensive final graduation show, on view at the Berkeley Art Museum through June 10, titled “Getting the Big Picture,” which encapsulates photographic imagery, a work table, a broken disco ball, shelves and a self-modeled piñata. Over the years Walker’s art has included videos, sculptures, installations and photography, and his current work is about the immediacy of capturing life as it is happening, more than any specific medium or subject matter. Walker balances his multiple identities in one seamless flow as part of his art-making practice, where he captures the cacophony of his daily life, between riding his bicycle from the outer Sunset to work in the café in the Mission, or to Berkeley, sitting stoic through crits from fellow MFA students, and all the while capturing his life in immediate and instantaneous ways. He can sling shots of espresso from behind the counter while carrying on two simultaneous in-depth conversations on art or food or bicycle mechanics, while giving his daughter, Elanor, a kiss as her mother stands her up on the counter to say hello, while nodding to various other customers and receiving gifts of homegrown eggs or produce, or some other amazing little homemade object his customers gift upon him.
If you walk into a room and immediately put up walls, you’ll never find the doors.”Īrtist, husband, father and friend, Brett Walker is also a Mission hipster icon as one of Four Barrel’s most easily recognized baristas. Put yourself in a frame of mind that you can allow whatever’s going to happen, happen, and be okay with it. He mostly shoots people from his neighbourhood, common people with stories written on the lines of their faces which he masterfully throws back in your face.“Allow yourself to walk through this world with me. “I don’t want to say anything with my work, the idea is that the images say what’s needed, but people who see it are more than welcome to say whatever they feel fit.”īrett Walker was born in 1962 in the north of England, by the age of 22 he was the only European photographer working in the fashion industry in Tokyo. He worked for fashion designers such as Yoji Yamamoto fashion magazines like Vogue, i-D and The Face, among others.īut Walker disliked the values that the industry was promoting, so he decided to leave it all and change profession and location quite dramatically, he became a merchant seaman.īeing a fashion photographer wasn’t his job anymore but he never stopped taking photos, his camera was/is always with him.
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