Creating a Long-Term Photo Documentary

For many people, photographs are part of everyday life: images made quickly in the moment, often with a cellphone, to remember where we were, who we were with, or something that briefly caught our attention. These images are valuable records of daily experience. Long-term photographic projects, however, offer another way of seeing: one shaped by sustained attention, commitment, and time.
For more than three decades, Chris Walker has photographed youth culture through the setting of rural county fairs. He began the project 37 years ago using 35mm film. Within the first decade, he made a significant shift, choosing to continue the work with a large 8×10 inch view camera. Though slower and more physically demanding, the large format camera offered a way of making images that felt more aligned with the depth, complexity, and visual presence of the story he wanted to tell. In this program, Walker will discuss the technical, aesthetic, and conceptual choices that shaped this acclaimed body of work, and will reflect
on what it means to build a photographic project over many years.