Tim Walker: Stars and Models
Knokke-Heist International Fotofestival, September 2010
By Esther Rosser
The very best models are, for Tim Walker, ‘silent-movie actresses’. (1) The model is the star of the fashion
photograph and it is around her that the narrative succeeds or fails. Accordingly, she embodies the essence of
the image, or the ‘mood’ as Walker often refers to it. She must tell you her story without speaking a word.
Models are accustomed to communicating with only their body or face, and it is perhaps for this reason that
Walker preferentially casts them over the current preponderance of Hollywood celebrities. Furthermore, with
the possible exception of Kate Moss, models do not occupy the tell-all celebrity realm in the same manner as
contemporary movie stars. Thus, with these actresses of the fashion photograph we are transported into the
constructed fantasy without the distraction of conflicting ‘real-life’ paparazzi or red-carpet images. The
suspension of disbelief, a core foundation of narrative film, is found instead in the malleable figure of the
fashion model.
That Walker has an eye for the uncommonly beautiful is no coincidence. Walker’s imagery is so elaborate and
theatrical that the model must establish her role, or risk being swallowed up by her surroundings. His leading
ladies, like Karen Elson, Erin O’Connor and Lily Cole, have a suitably unconventional appeal.
Acting is, on the most basic level, pretending to be someone or something else. This implies a level of artifice
within which fashion photography comfortably sits. While not all photographers require their models to
assume a character, this trait exemplifies the level on which Walker’s work is not only an elaboration of his own
imagination, but also, and perhaps more profoundly, an in-depth exploration of fashion photography itself.
Fashion photography necessarily operates at a distance from reality. Originally performing the function of
illustration, fashion photography quickly moved on from the straight-forward depiction of clothing, in the
process gradually severing the connection between the garment itself and its representation. Irving Penn
famously observed that fashion photography is about selling dreams and not clothes. Indeed, the vast majority
of people access high fashion in a mediated form, often via the escapism of the photograph that allows us to
dream of a life, and a wardrobe, that is different from our own.
Uninterested in the technicalities of photography, Walker found early encouragement in the idea that the
camera is simply a box you put between yourself and what you want to capture. He conceives of the viewfinder
as ‘a window to something magical’. (2) This conception of photography is evident in both his working practice
and his finished products. The magic in Walker’s pictures takes place in front of the camera and without the use
of digital manipulation. Walker is driven to capture an imagined scene and yet he does this by using props and
sets, creating trompe l’oeil effects. What we see in the final photograph has in fact undergone several
transformations; initially from the imagination of Walker (an unreal dimension), to an actualization in real space
and real-time before his camera, and finally returning once more to the realm of fantasy through the
eyes of the viewer.
On one level, Walker’s oeurve could be described as an exploration of nostalgia. There is an immediate
temptation here: an attempt to pinpoint the location of this nostalgia in, for instance, Walker’s own childhood
(which was idyllic by anyone’s standards) or in post-war Britain (the very ‘Englishness’ of Walker’s characters
and scenery seem to suggest this). However, nostalgia is in fact the recollection of a time or place that never
actually existed—it is a memory without location. Memory itself is full of gaps and slips, entirely subjective and
prone to fabrication. Walker has stated: ‘What I am photographing is an imaginary place that never existed, but
is connected to something that has already been.’ (3) The indexical quality often attributed to photography, is
complicated by Walker’s use of nostalgia—leaving us in a liminal space between the past and the present, the
real and the imaginary.
Walker delights in the idea that photography can elicit an emotive response, highlighting its communicative
function. Fashion photography has often been dismissed as interested in nothing more than consumerism, and
yet almost since its very beginnings it has been interested in story-telling. The editorial fashion spread is
typically where such stories play out, allowing the photographer the scope to explore a particular idea through
the fashion and/or mise-en-scène of an extended sequence. In this way, the fashion spread can act like a series
of film-stills; the larger narrative filling the gaps between the pages where we glimpse isolated moments from
the story.
It is also here that the dualistic and—as the critics would have us believe—conflicting notions of creativity and
commercialism reside. Fashion photography is by definition part of a much larger industry, occupying a middle
ground between the fashion and garment trade on the one hand, and the mass media on the other. The
fashion photographer assumes a position similar to that of the film director within a team of contributors’
including hair and make-up artists, stylists, set-designers, etc. The director may have a very specific vision, but
must also draw on the creative and technical expertise of others in order to realize the end-product. While
cynically, we might not include advertisers or editors as part of this creative team it is necessary to concede
that they play an important role in the commissioning process—allowing photographers, if they are any good,
to survive.
Walker is a collector. He collects ideas and images from a variety of sources and works on these within his
diaries and scrapbooks, combining elements, building a narrative mood, and collaborating with others to
achieve a final result. Each picture is the accumulation of endless hours of preparation, all of the elements
layered like a puzzle. This level of premeditation is evidenced in the content of the images, and furthermore, in
the deliberate incongruity Walker creates, toying with concepts such as scale and colour.
Like the very best of children’s fairytales, there remains in Walker’s pictures an off-note, a dangerous
undertone. There is a sense that the precariously complex scene might collapse, and our magnificent heroine
topple tragically to earth. While the models remain unfathomably gorgeous—other-worldly creatures in
couture—their often chaotic, dilapidated surroundings provide a note of contrast. These surroundings, that
might never be wholly clean or tidy, reveal a history of use, and tell a story of imperfection to which we can
relate. The contrast in this combination reminds us that life can be beautiful, even in less than ideal
circumstances; that there is romance in the everyday.
What many have observed as a childlike notion of play in Walker’s oeuvre, could be otherwise articulated as an
inherent optimism—something which, coincidentally, many of us lose beyond our youth. Regardless of the
particular mood or the diverse narrative explorations, Walker’s imagery is joyful. You simply cannot be
depressed when looking at Walker’s pictures—nor can you ever be bored.
ESTHER ROSSER
Lieven Gevaert Research Centre for Photography, K.U. Leuven
1 ‘In Fashion, Tim Walker’, Interview with Penny Martin, 3 June 2009, www.showstudio.com
2 ‘In Fashion, Tim Walker’.
3 Charlotte Sinclair, British Vogue, June 2008. Emphasis added.
Tim Walker: The Stars And Models. (2010). Esther Rosser. Retrieved 16th October 2015 From: http://www.timwalkerphotography.com/articles/tim-walker-stars-and-models
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