EN FOCO | Photographers  

Shawn Walker
Untitled,
Last Ritual in Harlem Series © ND


Shawn Walker
b. 1940, Harlem, NY
Lives in New York, NY


Selected Exhibitions:
Rockland Center for the Arts
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
12th World Festival of Youth and students, Moscow
Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY
Danbury Academy of Fine Arts
Kamoinge Workshop Gallery
Whitney museum
International Center of Photography
Museum of Modern Art
Studio Museum of Harlem
Harvard School of Art and Design


Education:
BFA, Empire State College


Awards:
Foundation for the Arts


Residencies:
Light Works, CAPS
Columbia University Film Board


Publications:
Nueva Luz photographic journal, Volume 1#4 (En Foco: Bronx, 1987)

“Street baptism has occurred annually on a Sunday morning, early in August, under the auspices of The United House of Prayer for All People. This, Church, which Daddy Grace founded in the 1930’s and led for 30years until his death, has a long history in the Harlem community. Its original location was on the block where the street baptism is now held.
Baptisms normally occur in a lake, stream or pool where the person can be submerged under water. Given the inadequate space in their church on 125th Street and 8th Avenue, The United House of Prayer made a unique adaptation, holding their annual Baptismal in the street with congregation “submerged” under the water from a fire house.
People from the Harlem congregation are joined by people from the immediate community and, increasingly, by groups from other parts of the City and out-of –state. The service is preached from a flatbed truck by Daddy Grace’s successors and augmented by intense Pentecostal bands, bringing the congregation to a religious state of trace / feeling the Holy Ghost”.



 

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