So almost forty years after my parents gave me the money to buy my first 35mm camera-- a Nikon F-- as a high-school graduation gift in June of 1970, here I am at last showing my work. And what was my earliest inspiration to become a photographer? Probably as a little boy thumbing through all those LIFE magazines while sitting on the settee at my grandparents’ house. Thoughts of becoming a photojournalist would eventually give way to an appreciation of photography as an art form and images by Margaret Bourke-White, Robert Capa and David Douglas Duncan began to be replaced by those of Walker Evans, Robert Frank and Martin Munkacsi. A perhaps cosmically-ordained artist-- I'm a Taurus, to whom it may concern-- photography has allowed me to get a bull’s eyes view of at least a small part (Germany, France, Austria, Brazil, Mexico and San Francisco where I was born and reared) of this big, blue marble. I hope that you'll like my interpretation of what I've seen. P.S. Thanks, Momma and Daddy. Wish you were here.

Walter N. Mackins February 13, 2007

Salvador, Bahia, Brazil            Munich, 1977                  Paris, 1977                    San Francisco              Italy 2007

1975 - 1980