Walker Pickering

Walker Pickering joined the high school marching band when he was 14 years old. He was already a student musician, but it was this new combination of performing music in motion that affected his perspective and ultimately changed the trajectory of his life. “A kind of family formed around me at a time when it was most critical, and through this new structure and discipline, I began to better understand who I was as an individual.”

In Pickering’s words, “At first glance, it seems these groups should no longer exist. With a decrease in civic engagement over the past few decades, a decline in popularity was poised to follow. But in America, the band became inextricably linked to football, so it persists as anachronism. With arts budgets under attack in the US, vital programs like these are at extreme risk, especially in less affluent areas where they’re needed most. Marching band isn’t about music or marching, it’s about people learning to pursue a common goal that transcends their own individual efforts.”

Pickering began this body of photographic work in 2012. The exhibition aims to capture the namesake “group pride” as well as both personal and shared nostalgia evoked and embodied by marching band culture.

A native Texan, Pickering currently lives in Lincoln, Nebraska where he teaches photography, video, and bookmaking at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. His work has been exhibited throughout the United States and internationally, and is included in a number of private and public collections, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and The Wittliff Collection of Southwestern & Mexican Photography.