“I like capturing stuff that is disappearing – that’s the point of photography. What I am photographing is an imaginary place that never existed, but is connected to something that has already been.” -Tim Walker

“I owe everything to Avedon.”

In 1995, supermodels earned $10,00 a day and Tim Walker, not yet 25 was a fourth assistant at Richard Avedon’s studio. In an interview by Tim Lewis in the September 15, 2019, issue of the Guardian, Walker says, “My role was very, very basic, but having to clear dog shit off the street right in front of his studio – which I had to do a lot – enabled to me to have a front-row seat in the experience of seeing Richard Avedon photograph. I was on the front line and how Dick communicated with the subject was everything.”

Two decades ago, Walker, now one of the preeminent fashion photographers recalls a shoot by Avedon where Nadja Auermann and Kristen McMenamy are being photographed for a Versace advertising campaign. “When Kristen and Nadja came out in two little black suits, he was like, ‘Oh, I think you’re crows and you are on a branch. There’s a worm on the floor and you’re fighting for that worm.’ Very simplistic, childlike scenarios that were very immediate.”

In a shoot for his Victoria and Albert Museum show Tim Walker: Wonderful Things, models are dressed in balloon-like outfits that he has no idea about how to photograph. He tells the models “This afternoon there will be a bunch of balloons being sold and they are going to be floating around and someone’s bought a balloon and a child is taking them away,”

About how he works with models he says, “I’d never talk to someone and say, ‘Stand here, face the light, pose like this…’ So yeah, I owe everything to Avedon.”

Upbringing

Tim Walker was born in Guildford, Surrey in the U.K. His family moved to Dorset where he and his brother spent summers trying to dam a small river that ran through their property so they could swim in it. They ran, jumped fences and built tree houses. He understands how fundamental his free-wheeling childhood is on his creativity, “I know the privilege of growing up feral, being allowed to run around gave me a lot of what I draw on now.”

Walker took a year before college to work on the Cecil Beaton Archive at Condé Nast in London. At the same time he entered the Independent’s, photography awards winning third place. He earned a 3 year degree in photography at the Exeter College of Art. Upon graduation, he worked as a photo assistant before moving to New York to assist Avedon. He was fired a year after he began at Avedon’s studio. “I didn’t hustle enough,” he says, “I was a very tragically bad photo assistant, very slow, and the people that worked for him were very quick, fiery and technically uber-experienced.”

Whimsical photos

On Photography: Tim Walker, 1970-present
Tim Walker photo by James Stopforth Tim Walker Studio

Walker returned to London after leaving New York. He worked initially on portraiture and news photography. In 2005, he photographed his first story for British Vogue. The success of this work led him to assignments for Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, W, Love, i-D and for clients like Barney’s New York, Gap and Yohji Yamamoto.

His work is different that Avedon’s. Walker creates a fantastical world for his images. “I know the world that I am painting is not a reality,” he says, “It is a whim, an entertainment to provoke something in people, whether as escapism or relief. I think that is very valid.”
“Viewers will be drawn in to meticulously crafted scenes, otherworldy landscapes which reveal Tim’s regard for British painter such as Eric Ravilious and Paul Nash,” says fromer Turner Prize judge Greville Worthington, “His seductive images demand to be read as more than fashion.”

Opening photo

Top row left to right: Cate Blanchette skiing on the moon, Paris 2015, Sarah Grace Wallerstedt, London, 2018, Edie Campbell with daisy chain & ‘Atlas’ the Lion, Shotover House, Oxfordshire 2013.

Bottom row left to right: Xiao Wen Ju in Lanvin, New York, 2012, Karlie Kloss and broken Humpty-Dumpty, 2010 (top image,) Inside Outside, England, 2002 (bottom image,) Tilda Swinton 2018, Jamie Bochert, Christina Carey, Erin O’ Connor & Anna Cleveland, in homage to Virginia Woolf. Charleston Farmhouse, East Sussex, 2015.

Tim Walker on magic

“I don’t want to sound mystical but sometimes when you take a picture – when the sets are in place – then something takes over and leads you. It’s this sense of extraordinary luck and chance. The shoot is blessed and charmed, and you make pictures that you couldn’t in your wildest dreams have imagined. That is the magic of photography.”

This video follows Tim Walker on some of his shoots inspired by objects from the V&A museum.

Sources: Michael Hoppen Gallery, The Guardian, V&A Museum, Business of Fashion, Tim Walker.

Read more stories about inspiration photogrpaher in On Photography.