If we take the broad sweep of American landscape photography and watch it swing like pendulum from the grandeur of Carleton Watkins and Ansel Adams all the way to the dispiriting suburban sprawl of the New Topographics photographers, Walker seems to have aimed for (and found) a new middle ground, where the messiness of human use can still be balanced by moments of grace. His pictures acknowledge the awkwardness that now pervades many of our “natural” spaces, but doesn’t give up on the our power to see the sometimes muddled (and ironic) beauty of what remains.
