The Awards Collective was created to feature the works of artist who have received either a Juror’s Award or Director’s Award in ASG’s Online exhibitions.  Anne Walker’s image Threshold received the Directors’ Award in the elsewhere exhibition juried by Kevin Tully.  Anne’s exhibition Recollection is discussed in this GalleryTalk.

Artist Statement

“An hour is not merely an hour, it is a vase full of scents and sounds and projects and climates and what we call reality is a certain connection between these immediate sensations and the memories which envelope us simultaneously with them.” Proust

For as long as I can remember, I have held on to family photographs and artifacts as tightly as I can for fear of losing the past. From an early age, I sensed how easily the memories and stories connected to these items could vanish with their storytellers. When I was 23 I lost my mother to cancer and a sense of finality and impermanence overtook me. The security of home and family stability disappeared. The person who shared the most precious family stories with me was gone. And now, as the years pass and there is no longer an older generation to verify facts, the stories are becoming murkier. I feel an urgency to give renewed energy to this history.

This series began with a rediscovered photograph of my maternal grandparent’s house. This was where I spent holidays and summers as a kid, exploring an attic filled with antique objects and photographs that opened a door to another time and place. There was magic in that house, something existed there that didn’t in my day to day world. My imagination was sparked.

Immersing myself in the visceral world of memory enables me to follow a bridge to the past to create this work. There I explore obscured family stories and fading recollections, creating photographs that meditate on the fragility of memory and discover touchstones to the past. Using my daughters in these images, wearing the clothes or holding objects that belonged to grandparents and great grandparents, the stories change and grow. There is no longer the finality I once saw in them but a continued thread.

This series is presented as selenium toned silver gelatin prints. All images were created with both large and medium format film cameras.

Anne Walker
January, 2026

Bio

Anne Walker is a San Francisco based photographer working in both film and digital formats.

Anne has been in love with photography since she processed her first roll of Tri-X in the Fort Hunt High School darkroom. She received her BA concentrating in photography at Hampshire College but after graduating followed her second love, working as a pastry chef, as a career. Over the past 8 years Anne has returned full time to photography and is currently pursuing her MFA at Maine Media College.

Much of Anne’s work focuses on themes of home, the fragility of memory, obscured family stories and traces of what we leave behind.

Anne’s work has been exhibited at The Center for Photographic Arts, The  Griffin Museum, A. Smith Gallery, and many others. Anne is a 2023 and 2025 Critical Mass Finalist.

website: annewalkerphotography.com
instagram: @annewalkerfilmphotos

link to online exhibition