Tim Walker is a British fashion photographer who makes work for Vogue, W and love magazine.[1] Tim Walker describes his work in a biography on his website as “Extravagant staging and romantic motifs characterise his unmistakable style.”[2] The guardian also describe Walker’s work as “whimsical, fantastical aesthetic…often exists in a surreal realm somewhere between a dream and a nightmare. The scale is off, or the colours are psychedelic…”[3]
In 2019 the Victoria and Albert Museum in London hosted Tim Walker: Wonderful Things exhibition displaying Walker’s work and paying homage to his career which spanned over two decades. The exhibition was curated by Shona Heath, a long-term collaborator of Tim Walkers. The exhibition featured 300 items as well as new work inspired by objects in the V&A selected by Walker. The V&A website describes the exhibition as exploring “…the creative process of one of the world’s most inventive photographers, through his pictures, films, photographic sets, and special installations.” Susanna Brown, Curator of Photographs at the V&A, worked closed with Walker and says “The exhibition features 10 distinct worlds, each with their own soundscape, in which he weaves together all the different threads. There is a narrative in his work, he’s a conjurer, and he conjures up scenes of make-believe.”
This exhibition was inspired by work made by Tim Walker in the past. Rooms of the exhibition transform you through lighting, space, sets, costumes and atmosphere to almost bring you into the world of the images created by Walker. Both Walker and Heath say they are inspired by their experiences of growing up in English countryside and fairy tales. These inspirations connect them, among other things “we shared a love of many things, including photographic influences and children’s book illustration…” [4]
Tim Walker has previously alluded to be inspired by objects saying “Each shoot is a love letter to an object, sometimes several objects” [5] which translates in the V&A museum’s commissioning of him to create several new images inspired by their own archive of artefacts and objects. There is an entire room in the exhibition with images of a shoot inspired by …. Shona Heath also worked on the shoot and explained her own of collecting of items from a variation of fabric shops and even Poundland to customise and involve in the projects. The exhibition is in connection to be inspired by objects; getting its name from the quote of the awestruck archaeologist seeing the glittering contents of Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922: “wonderful things”.[6] The glittering contents of the V&A working similarly to produce work with Tim Walker.
The work explored a range of content through the different images displayed and placed in separate and distinct spaces or worlds. The exhibit Box of Delights was a series of images inspired by a 17th-Century embroidered casket and a court mantua from the museum collection. The room created to hold these images resembled a “chintzy sitting-room”[7] with floral pattern wallpaper and pink carpet. It then lead to a glass case displaying the ‘secret garden’ used in the shoot for some of the images. Heath explained the world of the images as about the flamboyance and hardship of being transgender “a young man brought up in a [British] northern working-class world, and feeling caged like a butterfly; he then flourishes and shows his true colours…” The exhibition touches on and subtly explores other modern issues through Walker’s images as well as the set pieces that make up each room.
Walker insists on a team of people contributing to make this work and this is clearly conveyed in the In Cloud 9 shoot which was inspired by a “16th-century watercolour-and-gold painting, Krishna and Indra, from the Mughal Empire.”[8] The images are of models of Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi heritage in the bright, sunny, English countryside. The Models were said to have played a creative part in the making of the image and Editor-in-chief of British Vogue Enninful discussed the image as “culture that’s not just Indian, Pakistani or Bangladeshi, but also British, a new Britain you could say.”[9] The high ceilings of the room are decorated with hanging tall animal figures from the shoot and the glowing images displayed project this new culture of Britain. The room emits a psychedelic feel, the vivid colours in the images that are also in the large animal set pieces against the black room.
The photography is heightened, the task of absorbing an image is fully achievable in this exhibition as the use of set pieces and lighting in each room contribute to transcending you into the fantastical worlds of the images.
The Fantastical aesthetic in images created by Walker and mimicked in the rooms created in the exhibition inspired me to consider how I want to create and control atmosphere in a space. The environment of the image created through Heath’s set design pushed me to explore other unexpected materials particularly customising items with paint that glows under UV light or to play with the scale of a prop like the floor to ceiling height scrapbook at the end of the exhibition. I am keen to explore how scale of props can affect perception and atmosphere within a space with lighting and other elements.
The exhibition feels relevant to the work I want to make not just aseptically but also the incorporation of modern issues like transition into a ‘new British’ culture and the difficulty of being transgender felt important to the work but specifically how they were communicated subtly.
I was particularly inspired by how atmosphere is created and how the rooms were made to feel shifting into alternate realities. In my own work I also would like go attempt to design a space that similarly feels like somewhere to become inspired and explore creativity.
I felt this exhibition was able to inform my own piece as it is focused on a body of work from an artist as well as objects that inspire creativity and the result of these new inspirations. A focus on the process of creating and being transformed into the world of the creative influence is something I would like to explore and emulate in my own work. My own work will respond to my experience of this exhibition not only through exploration of the methods used by Tim Walker and Shona Heath but also the aesthetic choices made to transform the rooms into the fantastical worlds of the images.
[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/fashion/v-and-a-museum-tim-walker-fashion-photos-exhibition-tickets-photographer-victoria-albert-a8833146.html
[2] https://www.timwalkerphotography.com/biography
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/global/2019/sep/15/tim-walker-fashion-photographer-interview-theres-an-extremity-to-my-interest-in-beauty
[4] Shona Heath quoted in http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20190919-the-bewitching-fairy-tale-world-of-photographer-tim-walker
[5] http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20190919-the-bewitching-fairy-tale-world-of-photographer-tim-walker
[6] http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20190919-the-bewitching-fairy-tale-world-of-photographer-tim-walker
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Practice-based Research Project 