Carol Walker’s passion for photography started at an early age, with animals as her favorite subjects. She studied literature and photography as an undergraduate at Smith College and continued her education in photography after graduating, studying portraiture and nature photography. She has traveled all over the world photographing wildlife for the past 35 years. In 2000, Carol started her business Living Images by Carol Walker (www.LivingImagesCarolWalker.com), specializing in photographing horses. Carol’s stunning images masterfully showcase horses at liberty. She has taught horse photography workshops for the past 10 years in Dubai, France, Germany, and across the United States. She sells her fine art prints from her website as well as in several galleries in Colorado and has won numerous awards. Carol’s work in photography and with wild horses was featured in Horse Illustrated’s February 2017 issue. She has won multiple awards at Colorado art shows, including Best In Show in four juried shows and Best in Photography in 14 juried shows on the front range of Colorado.
Eighteen years ago, Carol began photographing wild horses. As she followed several herds in Wyoming, Colorado, and Montana, she became aware of how precarious their situation on public lands has become. Since then, she has dedicated herself to educating people with her photographs and stories about wild horses. Her three books, Wild Hoofbeats: America’s Vanishing Wild Horses; Horse Photography: The Dynamic Guide for Horse Lovers; and the latest, Galloping to Freedom: Saving the Adobe Town Appaloosas are all multiple book-award winners. Her newest book released in spring, 2022 is Blue Zeus: Legend of the Red Desert. Carol sees her artwork as an ideal vehicle for enhancing and expressing her advocacy for wild horses and the proceeds from the sales of her artwork and books fund her mission. Carol served as the director of field documentation and on the board of directors for Wild Horse Freedom Federation for 6 years. As one of the leading advocates for America’s wild horses, she dedicates herself to stopping their roundup and removal from America’s public lands and keeping them wild and free.
“Wild-horse lovers will be fixated by the author’s arresting visuals and her dramatic story of equine pathos.
A captivating coffee-table volume that will fascinate the eye and pluck the heartstrings.”
– Kirkus Reviews
NATURE & TRAVEL
BLUE ZEUS
BY Carol Walker • POSTED ON March 29, 2022
The struggle to save the charismatic wild horses of the American West animates this lavishly illustrated book that explores freedom and captivity.
Walker, a photographer, recounts her experiences with Blue Zeus, a wild stallion named for the exquisite color of his blue-gray coat. He also sports four knee-high white socks; a magnificently shaggy, wind-tossed mane; and a shock of hair that flops over his face to veil his brooding black eyes. The author, who judges him “the most beautiful stallion” she has ever seen, spent several seasons photographing Blue Zeus and his family of pinto mares and their yearlings and foals as they roamed the Red Desert Complex region of Wyoming. Her work is in part a pictorial essay on horse life. Her subjects graze, nuzzle, loll, and survey their grassy domain. Their idyll ended in 2020 when the Bureau of Land Management rounded up thousands of wild horses to clear range land for cattle. Thanks to his habit of leading his family out of approved Herd Management Areas, Blue Zeus was targeted for capture with no release. Later sections of the book relate Walker’s efforts to find Blue Zeus and his mares somewhere in the archipelago of BLM pens and arrange their adoptions by a horse sanctuary before they got sent to the slaughterhouse. The author’s homage renders the society of wild horses in vivid, evocative prose. (“Blue Zeus walked a little bit away from his family…and tried to nap in peace. First, little Fire got too close and Blue Zeus chased him away with ears pinned. Then Nike came over and he pinned his ears at her, but she was undeterred. Slowly the whole family came over, getting as close to him as possible.”) Walker’s pastorals are balanced by a gripping, intensely emotional cri de coeur against BLM roundups. (“It is a horrible feeling of helplessness: wanting to scream, throw up, as I see a horse go down or riders roping a foal and dragging it in.”) The color photographs are vibrant and glowing, posing the animals nobly against wide skies and distant mountains and conveying their fearful kineticism as they fled BLM helicopters. Wild-horse lovers will be fixated by the author’s arresting visuals and her dramatic story of equine pathos.
A captivating coffee-table volume that will fascinate the eye and pluck the heartstrings.
Publisher: Living Images by Carol Walker, LLC
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2022
ADDITIONAL WORKS AVAILABLE
Galloping to Freedom: Saving the Adobe Town Appaloosas
Galloping to Freedom: Reuniting the Adobe Town Appaloosas Playful. Protective. Dignified. Elegant and affectionate. Certainly beautiful. Above all else, loyal. These are the horses of Wyoming's famed Adobe Town herd, their stunning images caught in the wild by award-winning photographer Carol Walker. Especially remarkable are the snowcapped stallion that Walker thinks of as Bronze Warrior and his band of Appaloosa-marked mares and offspring. But their freedom was to be curtailed. In the fall of 2014, the Adobe Town horses were rounded up, their bands divided. Bronze Warrior and his sons were shipped to Colorado, their mares to a holding facility in Wyoming, and their young sent to Carson City, Nevada. Moved by the horse's strong family bonds in the wild, Walker joined with other advocates to intercede. This is the story captured in Walker's signature dramatic images of searching out, gathering together, and ultimately reuniting Bronze Warrior's extended family at the Black Hills Wild Horse Sanctuary. Galloping to Freedom: Reuniting the Adobe Town Appaloosas will engage your heart and forever change your view of America's wild horses. With a Foreward by Steven Israel, Member of Congress
Published: Jan. 1, 2015
ISBN: 0981793614
Horse Photography: The Dynamic Guide for Horse Lovers
Why photograph horses? Because, in the words of author Carol Walker, they "fill our hearts", and capturing them on film or in digital images expresses that relationship. We want to catch and hold -- and show -- their spirit, their tremendous joy in living, their unique personalities, and of course, their incomparable beauty. And we want the quality of our images to honour our glorious subjects. Photographing horses presents a double challenge, the first being the technical aspects -- the lenses, the setting, the light and speed, and how all those relate to the subject. The second element is more elusive; it is horse knowledge -- the educated ability to see how a horse moves, sense its moods, and understand its psychology as a prey animal. This book presents the tools to master both technique and subject matter. More than that, the book will stir your creativity and inspire you to spend more time focusing on these animals you admire. Carol Walker has travelled the world photographing animals for almost 30 years, and since 2000 has concentrated on horses, including the object of her greatest passion, America's wild horses. Carol's stunning images illuminate the relationship between horses and their people, as well as showcase the beauty of horses at liberty. She teaches equine photography workshops for amateurs, and her commercial work includes fine art, magazine covers, and calendars. Her first book, "Wild Hoofbeats: America's Vanishing Wild Horses" is in its second printing and has won numerous awards for the quality of images and evocative writing. This book will be the reference of choice for any photographer aspiring to do justice to that most appealing of animals, the horse.
Published: Jan. 1, 2010
ISBN: 0981793673
Wild Hoofbeats: America's Vanishing Wild Horses
Wild horses: bold, elusive, independent. Above all, free. Or are they? Most of us consider wild horses honored emblems of our Western spirit, but some see them as a resource to exploit or even a pest to eliminate. Which are they? For Carol Walker, the photographer and author of Wild Hoofbeats, the answer begins not in abstract argument over symbols and statistics, but with the horses themselves. In images that move fleetly from the pages straight into our hearts, Walker brings to brilliant life the horses of the Adobe Town herd in Wyoming's Red Desert, and we gain a priceless perspective on these graceful, courageous animals.
Walker gathered these dynamic images over years spent observing (sometimes at a distance, often within a mere stride or two) the bands of the Adobe Town herd. She emerged from her experience with a sense of personal acquaintance with the horses, a deep respect for their social allegiances and intelligence and a heart fully engaged by their plight. As art, the photographs are elegant. As documentary, they are evocative. In every respect, they are indelibly memorable. But Walker doesn't offer just photographs. In quiet, spare prose Walker invites us to journey with her as she meets the horses in the initial blur of mass impression, then band by band, and eventually, individual by individual. We come to recognize each stallion and note as the seasons pass the new battle scars, the special attention each gives to a favorite mare. We understand which mare is tender, which is a disciplinarian with her baby. And of course, we grow attached to the youngsters, first as curious foals, finally as adults venturing into perilous independence.
In the final chapters, Walker takes us on the roundup done by the Bureau of Land Management to control herd population, and we hold our breath. Which ones return home to their family bands, and which are separated forever? Ultimately, we are as invested in these horses as if they are our own. So travel with Carol Walker through Wild Hoofbeats, savor every painterly image and every poignant story, but beware: you cannot venture through this book and emerge unchanged.
Published: Jan. 1, 2008
ISBN: 0981793649
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