Maxine Walker was born to Jamaican parents in Birmingham, England in 1962. Active between 1985 and 1997, Walker sought to raise questions about the nature of identity and to dispel visual stereotypes, often using self-portraiture and constructed scenarios to address the limits of documentary photography. Walker was also instrumental in co-founding platforms for Black female photographers, including Monocrone Women's Photography Collective, Women + Photography and Polareyes, as well as Autograph ABP (then known as the Association of Black Photographers).
Photographer Maxine Walker was born to Jamaican parents in Birmingham, England in 1962. Active between 1985 and 1997, Walker sought to raise questions about the nature of identity and to dispel visual +stereotypes, often using self-portraiture and constructed scenarios to address the limits of documentary photography. Womanhood, selfhood and Blackness were all topics crucial to her practice, as was an interest in the psychological significance of the ways in which physicality is presented. In her early series, Auntie Lindie's House (1987, also referred to as the Front Room series), Walker produced portraits of subjects in their living rooms. Traditionally representing the public space within the private domestic sphere, the origins of the 'front room' can be traced back to the Victorian parlour, when it served as a place for social gatherings and entertainment. However, as pointed out by Elizabeth Robles, in the colonial and postcolonial context of the West Indies and the West Indian diaspora, the ‘front room’ took on new meanings. This was exemplified in portraits of British Afro-Caribbean families in their homes during the 1970s and early 1980s by diaspora artists including Neil Kenlock, Vanley Burke, and Armet Francis. According to Robles, ‘These images […] bring together the aesthetics and sensibilities of documentary photography with the incontrovertible drive to assert and affirm the complexities, multiplicities and mundanities of black British life’ (Robles 2017, p. 173). Walker represented full rooms, with an almost Baroque aesthetic, adorned with tassels, chintz, and doilies. With no particular subject in the scene, the photographs aimed to scrutinise the room itself, presenting its intricate details for the viewer to analyse. By doing so, Walker challenged and rejected documentary photography's assertion of portraying an unfiltered reality and conveying an indisputable truth. The ambiguity of the space where ‘the efficacy of display was sometimes more important than the authenticity of the objects’ (McMillan 2009, p. 45) was amplified, and the viewer was confronted with a space ‘for both reflection and creation, a space that is always in process and under construction’ (Robles 2017, p. 175).
Walker is best known for her series of compelling self-portraits, such as Black Beauty in the 1980s and the Untitled photographs that featured in the Self-Evident exhibition at the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham in 1995 as part of the Africa 95 Festival (examples in the V&A collection). The photographs investigated identity, genealogy, the construction of racial difference and related concerns that were becoming central to the perception of belonging in Britain. Using glamourous wigs, clothing, jewellery, and makeup to highlight the transformative power of self-expression, Walker's self-portraits challenged traditional representations of Black women, ‘disrupting the idea of an approved womanhood’ (Frieze). This provocative approach directly confronted the notion of racial purity, emphasising the ability of Black women to re-invent themselves in ways that defy stereotypes and societal expectations. Through her multi-dimensional representation of Black women, Walker also underscored the idea that histories are constructed and, at times, rooted in fiction. In her groundbreaking series of self-portraits Untitled (1995), Walker focused on her facial features in closely-cropped black and white photographs, which are ‘elegant, uncompromising, and nostalgic’ (Kpade 2019). The sequence of ten portraits took the viewer on a charged visual journey as the artist was seen peeling transparent film from her face, a simple gesture repeated in varying poses. The self-portraits evoked a narrative that was more ominous than playful, suggesting that her blackness could not – and should not – be erased. By magnifying the delicacy of her skin, the viewer was also invited to contemplate intricate concepts of beauty, masquerade, and vulnerability.
A pioneering artist, Walker was also instrumental in co-founding platforms for Black female photographers, including Monocrone Women's Photography Collective, Women + Photography and Polareyes, as well as Autograph ABP (then known as the Association of Black Photographers). She was also active within Ten.8, an organisation in Birmingham which played a significant role in highlighting and generating some of the most important works and discussions surrounding Black photography during the 1980s and 1990s. Ten.8 brought together the advancements in writing from the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies and a burgeoning group of Black and white photographers and writers in the area, including Vanley Burke and Walker herself. Walker’s work was featured in many groundbreaking exhibitions, including Intimate Distance alongside works by Ingrid Pollard, Zarini Bhimji, Sutapa Biswas and Mona Hatoum, addressing issues of Black cultural politics through portraits, installations, projections and videos (1989, Photographer’s Gallery, London); Transatlantic Dialogues, featuring the work of Black photographers from Britain and America (1990, Stills Gallery, Edinburgh); A Conspiracy of Silence, exploring the subject of bereavement in the Afro-Caribbean community (1996, The Lighthouse, Wolverhampton). More recently, her Untitled series was shown at Autograph, London (2019); she also featured in Life Between Islands: Caribbean-British Art 1950s-Now, Tate Britain (2021) and Black Venus, Somerset House, London (2023). Her work is represented in UK public collections, including the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Maxine Walker]
Publications related to [Maxine Walker] in the Ben Uri Library