The photographer turned his camera to glimmers of innocence in times of social turmoil.
Coming of age in Harlem during the 1940s and 50s, photographer Shawn W. Walker was a quintessential New York City kid who learned to move fluidly between different worlds from a young age. Shawn’s parents moved north during the Great Migration to create a better life for themselves, making a home for their two boys on 117th Street.
“I didn’t realise we were middle class until I was in my late 20s or early 30s,” Shawn says. His father had a union job with Jersey Central Railroad while his mother was a domestic worker at a white beauty salon. “I was naïve and believed the hype that if you lived in a Black neighbourhood, you were poor. My brother was 18 months older than me, and we were really social kids. We went to dances, and my mother was invited as a guest to parties thrown by the Italians she worked for. My mother was very personable and people liked her”.
