Now in his 80th year, African American photographer Shawn W. Walker’s extraordinary life is a testament to the power of self-determination in the face of forces mobilized to subjugate and destroy the Black race. Hailing from 117th Street in Harlem, Walker’s parents moved to New York from the South during the Great Migration, determined to create a better life for themselves.
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Walker first fell in love with photography as a youth, watching his uncle hustle Polaroids. “I used to carry the film and the cameras, and he would go do the route of the local bars,” Walker says. “On Friday, Saturday night, he’d kill them. He was the first person with a Polaroid; it really blew Black folks’ mind.”
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Walker set up a makeshift darkroom at home, using an enlarger his uncle gave him, which was missing the diaphragm, while setting up developing trays on his mother’s ironing board. After a junior high school teacher encouraged him to pursue art, Walker enrolled in Benjamin Franklin High School, the only local public school where he could study photography. “It was still Harlem, but in the Italian neighborhood,” he says.
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