Feb 26, 2020
Originally hailing from Winnipeg, Mark Walton is the founder of Foto:RE and a founding director of FLASH|Contemporary Photography HERE, a festival of photography in Waterloo Region.
He is also the curator of a large (50,000+) collection of photography by Stan Rosenthall, an urban and commercial photographer who worked in the heyday of the 1960's New York City ad scene.
On Bonn Park with Sara Geidlinger and Marshall Ward, Walton talked about creating the newly minted magazine, foto:RE|VIEW, as a means of sharing the work of the best photographers in Waterloo Region and beyond.
“Fresh off the success of a solo show at a community gallery, I was suffering a serious bout of imposter’s syndrome,” said Walton, a musician who turned to photography when his wife and artistic director Lisa O’Connell bought him a DSLR camera in 2005.
“Not only had I been shooting for a very short period of time, but all of my experience with photography was limited to the digital realm. I had a very receptive audience, but felt I was undeserving of it. foto:RE was founded as a selfish act. I needed mentorship, and I had to seek it out.”