Wonderful Things
Tim Walker is a legend in the game when it comes to fashion photography. He’s been dazzling readers of Vogue, Love and W magazines for over a decade with his unmistakeable style, mainly based around portraiture with elaborate staging, set design and creativity. Wonderful Things is Walker’s first solo show at the V&A, however, pieces of his art kept in their permanent collection around the building.
The first room in the exhibition contains his greatest hits: an introduction to the brilliance of his work, as well as a stark reminder of all the big names he has photographed. Pictured is anyone from Attenborough, to Joanna Lumley, to Anthony Joshua. What I first noticed about the exhibition was the beautiful simplicity of the information displayed alongside the photographs. Instead of long-winded background on Walker’s life, instead were snippets into his mind – direct from the horse’s mouth. We learn how making photographs is a “dream state” to Walker, how he sees photographs as “souvenirs”, and how “the camera is a state of mind”. One thing is clear, if photographs really are a manifestation of psyche, then Walker is one interesting chap.
Walker speaks of his discovery of surrealism, as a by-product of his complicated fantasies. He designs all his own sets, and with the help of his partner in crime, Shona Heath, the V&A setting became a set itself for his photographs. Each room from the first was akin to the theme it explored – we were taken to dark chapels, Indian fields, dolls houses and more. The experience of the exhibition therefore was not just in Walker’s photographs, but in the whole immersive setting around it. It reminded me of a smaller show I saw a while ago – Juno Calypso’s What To Do With A Million Years. Both of these gave the viewer such a heightened appreciation of the effort gone into the work and really help to ingrain certain styles on the viewer well beyond they’ve left.
A vast majority of the space is taken up by his responses to V&A collections – from old religious tapestry, to Aubrey Beardsley’s illustrations, to Indian paintings, to snuff boxes. These are all new commissions, and each is as dazzling as the next. The nude is a consistent theme running through many of them, and whilst the body is opened, bent and framed in different proportions, it appears undoubtedly beautiful in each instance. Walker’s work calls for the freedom of the subject to be themselves, using an embroidered jewellery box in one room as a metaphor for our hidden selves, desires and secrets that need to be unhinged and set free: a pandoras box of hidden identity and liberation. He talks of the importance of really getting to know his subjects before he photographs them, to therefore aid his representation. Describing a portrait as half-way meeting point between sitter and artist - it is a "handshake" - fraught with vulnerability and tenderness.
Creative, bold, exciting and original. This is level of skill you expect to be seeing in the 21st century, with the addition of editing and manipulation only to enhance the beauty of the real-life forms themselves: not used to overpower and destroy the reality entirely. Walker creates these scenes from scratch – the importance for him are seeing it in front of him in real time, often regretting not being able to capture the motion of many scenes he see’s unfold before his eyes of each shoot. The exhibition has hidden gems everywhere – make sure to look up in the Indian Summer room to discover wild animals running over your head, and at your feet in other rooms to see images that even a mouse can enjoy.
Overall, one thing is clear throughout the walls of the exhibition: Walker has a rare talent of being able to depict his subjects incredibly well. Get yourself to the V&A and get to know Walker like he’d get to know you: thoroughly - with wit, charm, talent and a whole lot of fun.
OVERALL RATING: *****
https://www.vam.ac.uk/exhibitions/tim-walker
