About the John Walker photos

In April 2001, a great Walker photographer, my uncle Bill, let me borrow 56 photos which John Walker took during the early years of the 20th century. They were pasted on sheets of heavy black paper which had been part of a scrapbook at one time. Most of the pictures had captions which John wrote below them in white ink. I've displayed John's captions "as is" and added my own comments in blue. (These comments may appear in italics in certain browsers.)

In January 2003, my brother John Walker Carey discovered 28 more of his namesake's photos which had belonged to our parents. It was fun adding them to the Tombstone scrapbook. There was no identifying information for any of them, so I'll give you my best guesses as to who or what is depicted, also in blue. This batch of photos may, or may not, have been taken during 1914. There's a car with a license from that year in one of them. Also many of the shots are similar to one another. Most of these 3" x 5½" pictures were cleverly hinged (by Uncle John?) on a 5" x 10" piece of black scrapbook paper, like this:

Later in 2003, cousin Mike Capp sent me some photos which had belonged to his parents which he thought I might be able to use in a slide show I was assembling for the Walker reunion at Asilomar. Among them was an album (see picture below) containing 17 of John Walker's masterpieces. Several of them were exact copies of pictures which we had already included in our Tombstone scrapbook, except they were better! Mike's contributions have been added to the Tombstone scrapbook and some of the photos he sent us have replaced their less-beautiful counterparts.

In March 2012, cousin Karen Evarts contributed a family photo with no identifying information on it which Uncle Bill had given her.

Uncle John loved to experiment with all the techniques of photography which were available to him. The last time I saw him, in 1948, he let me use one of his filters on my own cheap little camera so I could get a different view of the desert landscape near Tucson.

I hope you'll enjoy turning the pages of John Walker's Tombstone Scrapbook, which I've included in our Family Album. It includes not only pictures taken in Tombstone, but also in Tucson, Phoenix, Nogales, and all over the beautiful southern Arizona desert. Bill Walker's photographs are also available at the Pimería Alta Historical Society in Nogales, AZ.

Thank you, everybody, for sharing these treasures with me. If any of my Walker kin would like to add more John Walker photographs to this tribute, I'll be pleased to accept your contributions and will give you full credit.