Robert Walker / Australia 1922–2007 / Ian Fairweather (from ‘Hut’ series) 1968, printed 2006 / Gelatin silver photograph / 40.6 x 27.8cm / Purchased 2007. Queensland Art Gallery Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery / © Robert Walker 1968. Licensed by Viscopy, 2017

Robert Walker
Ian Fairweather (from ‘Hut’ series) 1968

Not Currently on Display

Robert Walker first met the artist Ian Fairweather in 1966 after being told by fellow artist Lawrence Daws that Fairweather was living on Bribie Island. Walker visited on several occasions to photograph him.

These photographs encapsulate Fairweather’s existence on the island and his singular and ascetic devotion to his painting. The selection balances the unobserved regard of the photographer with images that reveal more of a rapport between Walker and the painter.

Robert Walker was born in Singleton, New South Wales, in 1922. He left Australia at the age of seven to be educated at an English boarding school. At the outbreak of World War Two, Walker lied about his age to enlist in the Royal Air Force. The time he spent in the war sparked his interest in photography, and he began working for the Daily Herald newspaper when he returned to Australia in 1949.

After meeting actor and theatre designer Robin Lovejoy, Walker commenced photographing productions of the Old Tote Theatre Company in Sydney. By the early 1950s, he was receiving photography assignments from the Australian Ballet and the New South Wales Dance Company.1

Walker worked for The Bulletin magazine and Life Australia during the 1960s and spent three months in 1969 travelling throughout New Guinea and the Trobriand Islands (off New Guinea’s east coast) photographing indigenous art for a proposed book by Australian painter Tony Tuckson.

In 1985, Walker was awarded the Moya Dyring memorial studio residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. During this residency, Walker photographed locations on the island of Belle Île associated with Australian impressionist painter John Russell (1858–1930). Robert Walker died in 2007.

Endnotes:

1 Robert Walker: Photographs [exhibition catalogue], Heiser Gallery, Brisbane, 2006.