Bob Walker (1952-1992) was a San Francisco, California based photographer and environmental activist. In an intense period of activism from 1982 to 1992 he was associated with more than a dozen Bay Area environmental organizations and as a photographer for the East Bay Regional Park District. He died of AIDS in September 1992.

Quotes from Bob Walker

Bob Walker 1952-1992

"Find something outside yourself that is yourself. Then devote yourself to it with all your heart." Bob Walker, 1991

"With the valleys having fallen to development, our beloved hills now feel the onslaught of the bulldozer, and building pads replace the irreplaceable grandeur of our ridges." Bob Walker

"The moment that someone is driving down the road and suddenly sees a bulldozer or some grading or a house under construction high in the hills where they never imagined development would take place is the moment they individually cross the line and say to themselves 'this has to be stopped.'" Bob Walker (Contra Costa Times 8-27-1990)

"I've really felt evangelical about making people stop and realize that they're in the middle of a very stunning landscape. It's all around them, and so accessible, but often they've overlooked it because California is loaded with so many superlatives." (December 1992, Diablo magazine.)

Artist/Photographer 1974-1992

Bob Walker grew up in Youngstown, Ohio. After graduation from Oberlin College, Ohio in 1974 he drove across country, entering the Bay Area through Altamont Pass whose sensual hills he would note were the cause of his love affair with California.

He lived in San Francisco's Haight Ashbury during the height of the Gay liberation era, earning his living as a handy man and property manager. He began exploring the Bay Area, his chief companion his canine friend 'Dog', concentrating on the East Bay because many of its regional parks were dog friendly.

Soon he began taking photos. He credited a photo taken in winter 1982 as a pivotal point in his ability to take photographs. It was a particularly wet rainy season and the Bay Area hills were a deeper green than normal. One stormy day he was hiking in the rain in his favorite park, Morgan Territory, between Clayton and Livermore. The sky was completely covered with dark rain clouds above a pastoral landscape of sensual green hills, with Mt. Diablo in the distance. He realized that the clouds were parting and a sun beam was about to break through. If he could only get to the ridge in time, the sun beam would pass over the green hills illuminating them. He captured the image, Winter Storm over Marsh Creek, and later noted that it was the first time he envisioned a photo before it had been created by the shifting clouds and light.

Barbara Moskowitz, his long time employer as a manager of her properties, was a virtual shut-in who valued his skills as a photographer, and his emerging activism, and became his patron as more of his time was dedicated to those two pursuits. His sensitivity was embodied in the renovation of a building Moskowitz owned in Berkeley at Dwight and Telegraph (housing apartments and Moe's Bookstore among other businesses). Birds had nested for years in the facade of the building above store front windows. Walker carefully preserved the nests and made triangular holes in the new facades so they could continue their residence.

Over time photography supplanted his odd jobs as his major income, primarily for the East Bay Regional Park District. He became close friends with the Regional Park District's helicopter pilots and many of his photos were taken from the helicopters.

Walker would walk out of his garden apartment at Clayton and Haight Streets in San Francisco, into the middle of Haight Street. Looking east down Haight, across San Francisco Bay, he could pick out a grove of bay trees at the top of Rocky Ridge in Las Trampas Regional Preserve, between the East Bay cities of Moraga and San Ramon. If the grove was distinct he knew that the air quality was clear enough for good photos, most of which were taken in the last few hours before sunset, a time he dubbed "Magic Hour."

Walker's Refuge

Walker's garden apartment in San Francisco, on Clayton Street just below Haight, was his refuge. When you entered the apartment's front gate you passed through a leafy green tunnel crowded with potted and hanging plants. Inside the front door a hallways passed the length of the aprtment with a door to a living room, opeing to the kitchen and ending at a back door into a garden. One wall of the hallway was papered with USGS maps of the Bay Area from the coast to the Delta and a phone call with Walker was frequently marked by his movement to the map to discuss land campaigns or purchases.

A tiny kitchen over looked the garden, which joined with those of surrounding buildings in a tree-shaded court. Walker had built raised beds on top of the patio pavement and each year he replanted the garden with flowering plants. Given the small size of the apartment, the garden was where visiting friends congregated.

The living room was accessed from the hallway, the kitchen, or the bedroom near a bathroom. Walker was an inveterant collector; the apartment was crowded with salvaged antique furniture and landscape photographs. At one end of the living room was a small closet filled with a small desk, light table, and shelves crowded with slides. The desk chair protruded from the closet. Walker spent countless hours in the closet cataloging photographic slides.

From the living room you passed through a doorway to the bathroom or bedroom. The bathroom was legendary because every flat surface was crowded with found objects from Walker's trips and hikes--old bottles, animal skulls, doll heads, seeds, dried plants, etc. The walls were papered with photos and postcards--many of them out takes of friends. Although Walker customarily took slides he often printed photos, applied postcard backings and sent them to friends and family.

The wall between the living room and facing into the bedroom was hung with his favorite landscape photographs. The bed was covered with a quilt made by a friend and depicting the East Bay hills, accompanied by original music inspired by those same hills that the friend had recorded. More windows overlooked the back garden.

As Walker became ill, he spent more and more time in the bedroom, the view of his favorite East Bay landscape photos. His chief care givers included Chris Beaver, Judy Irving, Tony Heiderer and Sarah Pollock.

San Francisco in the beginning of the AIDS era

Bob Walker was a Gay Man living in San Francisco during the height of the Gay liberation era. He was one of the first people diagnosed with HIV in the 1980s, in a period of secrecy and discrimination. He had been part of a hepatitis study from which blood samples had been preserved at a San Francisco hospital. When blood tresting began the refrigerated samples were seized upon and participants of the earlier study contacted. They provided early data about AIDS mortality rates.

Walker was made aware of his status early on. He was assymtomatic for many years then received access to early drug regimes including AZT and pentamidine. He died in September 1992 before new drug therapies were developed which vastly prolonged the lives of some HIV+ individuals.

Environmental Activist 1982-1992

When a For Sale sign appeared on a property including those same hills in Morgan TerritoryMorgan Territory, the square mile Marshall property, Walker became an activist. In 1987 the Marshall Property was eventually preserved as the first addition to Morgan Territory Regional Preserve in more than a decade.

Walker began leading hikes, and became active in Save Mount Diablo, Greenbelt Alliance (previously known as People for Open Space), Preserve Area Ridgelands Committee (PARC), the East Bay Area Trails Council, Save San Francisco Bay Association, etc.

He later became president of the Board of the San Francisco Bay Chapter of the Sierra Club where he helped create the first Gay Lesbian Activities Section in the Sierra Club, and a member of the Board of Directors of Save Mount Diablo (SMD). He helped lead dozens of activist campaigns and helped create the San Francisco Bay Area Ridge Trail and the Diablo Trail.

He combined diverse talents--a great eye and technical skills for photography--with empathy and great humor. He could read the landscape like a map, was well read, and developed impressive negotiating skills. He was a powerful and persuasive public speaker. He testified at hundreds of public hearings, his photographs were utilized in many campaings, and he was adept at media relations.

He facilitated the campaigns of many organizations, in concert with a group of conservationists including Directors Lynn Bowers, Jocelyn Combs and Ted Radke, and Asst. General Managers Bob Doyle and Janet Cobb of the East Bay Regional Park District; Mark Evanoff of Greenbelt Alliance; Seth Adams, Save Mount Diablo's Program Director; John Woodbury of the Sierra Club and the East Bay League of Conservation Voters; journalist Sarah Pollock; historical geographer and author Gray Brechin; and Chris Beaver and Judy Irving of the Independent Documentary Film Group. Many of these colleagues later served as members of the Independent Documentary Film Group's Bob Walker Archives subcommittee as it negotiated with the Oakland Museum to create The Bob Walker Collection.

Walker was one of the key activists in the creation of Pleasanton Ridge Regional Preserve, Round Valley Regional Preserve, and the connection of Morgan Territory Regional Preserve to Mt. Diablo State Park. He helped stop the proposed C&H, Marsh Canyon, Garaventa and Round Valley landfills, and the proposed Buckhorn Reservoir. When journalist Sarah Pollack, on a hike to the bottom of the proposed Buckhorn Reservoir, asked 'how deep would we be at this spot'? Walker replied, 'from here we'd get the bends before we reached the surface'.

One of Walker's most proud accomplishments was the passage of the Regional Park District' $225 million open space funding Measure AA in November 1988, enabling a vast expansion of the Regional Park District's land holdings from approximately 60,000 to more than 100,000 acres.

In association with the Independent Documentary Film Group he was involved in the creation of three open space related films, Treasures of the Greenbelt,Secrets of the Bay, and Out of the Way Cafe.

Bob Walker Ridge and the Bob Walker Regional Trail, 1992

Walker's favorite place was Morgan Territory Regional Preserve which he helped to more than quadruple in size. A month before his death in September 1992 the East Bay Regional Park District honored him with the naming of a section of Morgan Territory Ridge as "Bob Walker Ridge" as well as the "Bob Walker Regional Trail" both at Morgan Territory. Walker described the honor as the "proudest moment of my life."

Walker's memorial was held on Sunday, September 27, 1992 at the north end of Bob Walker Ridge--near where he had previously buried "Dog." Several hundred people attended the event at the end of which his ashes were scattered over the ridge from the Regional Park District helicopter.

Bob Walker Ridge is a section of Morgan Territory Ridge circled on the east and west by the Volvon Loop Trail. Crowned with oaks and bays with grassland below on the west side, heavily wooded on the east side, the ridge is visible for miles. It includes views west to Highland Ridge, Mt. Diablo--much of the scene depicted in his pivotal photo Winter Storm Over Marsh Creek--and Black Diamond Mines Regional Preserve. To the east it over looks Round Valley Regional Preserve and the Los Vaqueros reservoir and watershed, with more distant views across the defeated Marsh Canyon landfill, the new Cowell Ranch State Park, Vasco Caves and Brushy Peak Regional Preserves, the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, and across the Central Valley to the Sierra Nevada mountain range.

Bob Walker Regional Trail is also found in Morgan Territory Regional Preserve, stretching from Mt. Diablo State Park within Riggs Canyon across Highland Ridge, down into the Marsh creek drainage and back up and north around the Bob Walker Ridge and finally south to the Preserve main staging area. It overlays sections of the Highland Ridge Trail and the Volvon Loop Trail. Part of it is overlain by the Diablo Trail which Walker helped create.

Bob Walker Bay Area Open Space Conservation Award

For a number of years the Gay-Lesbian Activities Section of the Sierra Club maintained an endowment for a Bob Walker Conservation Award which it presented several times. Eventually the award was discontinued and the endowment was donated to the Oakland Museum to help fund the exhibit "After the Storm: Bob Walker and the Art of Environmental Photography" 03-03-2001 - 06-24-2001.

A new award was created by John Woodbury, Executive Director of the Bay Area Open Space Council, the Bob Walker Bay Area Open Space Conservation Award which honors an individual who brings diverse people together to advance the cause of land conservation.

The Bob Walker Collection, 1993 to present

Walker's photo archives, The Bob Walker Collection including more than 30,000 images, were transferred in 1993 to the Oakland Museum, also known as the Museum of California, which later conducted a full scale exhibit of his work.

After the Storm: Bob Walker and the Art of Environmental Photography" March 3, 2001 to June 24, 2001

"After the Storm: Bob Walker and the Art of Environmental Photography" was an exhibit and retrospective of Bob Walker's work held at the Oakland Museum, "The Museum of California" from March 3, 2001 to June 24, 2001. The exhibit traveled to several other locations.

Walker's photographs had been exhibited many places during his life. The Oakland Museum retrospective was the first major show about both his work and his activism. Curated by Christopher Beaver, Judy Irving and Ellen Manchester of the Independent Documentary Group, the exhibit placed Walker's work in the context of the history of photography in the environmental movement, demonstrating its relationship to work of such artist/activists as Ansel Adams, Phillip Hyde, Eliot Porter, the Mono Lake Committee and Robert Dawson.

Several rephotographs, by Ellen Manchester and Robert Dawson, of sites photographed by Walker demonstrated the changes that have taken place in the Bay Area landscape. The exhibition also included Walker's photographic equipment, correspondence, maps, field books, scripts, and recordings of talks he presented. A resource center provided brochures and contact information for a variety of Bay Area and Northern California conservation and open space organizations.

The exhibition was cosponsored by the Oakland Museum of California, the Gay and Lesbian Sierrans, and East Bay Regional Park District, with funding from the Compton, and the George Frederick Jewett Foundations.

Bob Walker Photos

Bob Walker's landscape photos can be viewed at the Oakland Museum. They can also be seen in the hallways of the headquarters of the East Bay Regional Park District, 2950 Peralta Oaks Court, Oakland, CA 94605. They appeared in many newspapers, magazines and books during his life. They are frequently published in Bay Nature magazine.