Colour is Power

An aggressively bright yellow taxi hopes to catch the attention of a harassed city dweller…A window display of theatrical complexity suggests a microcosm of the metropolis itself…Graffiti-spattered walls and vehicles might well be confused with the bright frames of comic-books…These are the targets of Robert Walker’s extraordinary photography - the contemporary, universal meglopolis, in all its crazy colour, its dissonance and chaos. Robert Walker’s world is one in which mundane activities take on the character of inexplicable urban rites and quasi-mythic struggles. Using the phone, crossing the street, holding one’s own on the busy pavement: such insignificant actions demand competitiveness and creativity. The photographer records these instants with an eye for the odd and the absurd, but not without empathy for the individual caught up in the city’s complex machinery. His witty blurring of the real and unreal - the sign, the illusion, the simulacrum, ultimately the dream - forces us to question our understanding of the city. The actual city, Walker seems to be saying, is as much image as glass, concrete, steel and living flesh. Walker’s introduction to this book gives th