An exhibition dedicated to Tim Walker recently opened at the Kunsthal Rotterdam in the Netherlands. The famous English fashion photographer unfolds a fantastic iconography that deals with childhood nostalgia and questions of identity.
Tim WalkerWonderful Things
When Tim Walker arrives at the Kunsthal Rotterdam for the press conference last Friday morning, he is accompanied by the staff of the Victoria & Albert Museum, with whom he realized the exhibition, and by his mother. The presence of this lady in the front row of the event is a reminder of how much the photographer’s childhood influenced his work. The wonder of his early years never left him and it is precisely this sense of wonder that makes the exhibition Tim WalkerWonderful Things wants to revive in the visitors.
Born in England in the 1970s, Tim Walker worked in the archives of the American company Condé Nast from the age of 18. It was there that his interest in photography was sparked when he discovered the images of photographer and costume designer Cecil Beaton. Years later, his love for the archives is still alive. To ignite the creative spark, the photographer did some research, walking the miles of corridors of the V&A, picking a slew of eclectic objects here and there. After hours of discussions with the museum’s curators, Tim Walker invented enchanting images inspired by a handful of ancient artifacts that he selected himself.
“Each photograph is an attempt to capture the emotions I felt upon encountering these artifacts and the stories they conjured up in my mind,” reads one of the exhibit’s maps. Tim Walker wrote every single text. The confidential words he entrusts to visitors brilliantly convey his enthusiasm.
In a room lined with pink wallpaper lies a gilded key from 1680. Tim Walker explains that he saw it as an expression of the universal need to create an intimate world in which to express one’s desires, dreams and imagination. “We all feel the need to keep our secrets in a private world that we love. A diary, an album or even a phone,” he wrote. This key resulted in a series of photographs Box of Delightswhich features model James Spencer in an enchanting world in feminine pieces.
Farther back, the V&A’s stained glass windows illuminate a dark room and mark the starting point for a new series of photographs, Lil Dragon. Tim Walker says that he was touched by the colorful backgrounds and that the light-filled red color reminds him of his mother. He says: “When I was little, she made five large red silk lampshades for our living room. On winter evenings the house was bathed in a warm light. For me, this color represents the return home”
Alongside the objects from the V&A’s collections, Tim Walker pays tribute to the museum’s curators in a section titled Handle with care, which includes an Alexander McQueen dress poetically wrapped in tissue paper. During the conference he explained that he was touched by the curators’ work: “I found the idea of conservation as a human gesture for the future hopeful, as it means that there is a future”. A future where “people will have a relationship with beauty like we have today.”
beauty
The idea of beauty is pervasive in Tim Walker’s work and his take on the subject is clear: “The real secret of beauty is to be yourself,” he says. He adds: “Being who you are is the most interesting thing”. He explains that he is attracted to new beauties that one is not (yet) used to seeing.
“What interests me,” he writes, “is breaking down the boundaries that society has created so that we can celebrate all kinds of beauty and the wondrous diversity of humanity.” At Tim Walker, the Photoshop tool often used in the fashion industry to lift a thigh or slim a stomach is banned.
His photographs show bodies of all kinds: the luscious curves of Beth Ditto, the androgynous features of Tilda Swinton or the face of Melanie Gaydos, a model with a genetic disease. Most of his subjects are as famous as himself, but he says he enjoys photographing people who are less used to the limelight. In his opinion, if we live in society, we are all performers by nature. We are all performers, much more than we think”.
Tim WalkerWonderful Things, in the Kunsthal Rotterdam. From September 24, 2022 to January 29, 2023.
This article was similarly published on FashionUnited.fr. Translation and editing: Barbara Russ