Review: Tim Walker: Story Teller at Somerset House

What better way to spend a secret day off from the kids than at the fashion photographer Tim Walker’s Story Teller exhibition in Somerset House? It’s grey and dreary outside, but stepping into the East Gallery, currently bursting with colour, beauty and verve, seems to make the world right again.

Or, at the very least, it sparks the imagination. What would it be like to be the model Kristen Mcmenamy, battling with a giant white spider and cavorting with the a cello-playing bee? Or Malgosia Bela, strapped into Gianfranco Ferre, cowing in a doorway? Or even pursued in a dark forest by a giant Dolly, complete with Shirley Temple curls, like Lindsey Wixson?

Tim Walker’s photographs have appeared in Vogue, month by month, for over a decade, extravagant staging and romantic motifs characterising his style. Echoing surrealist artists Magritte and Dali, signature props include a series of burnt-out bowler hats and wind-up pipes, used in photographs of the Monty Python gang; oversized tea cups, giant newspapers and supersize insects, while his doll masks lend more than a passing nod to 1920s theatre designer Oliver Messel. Messel himself is often described as a ‘theatrical illusionist’, a description just as easily applied to Walker.

Walker is our modern day Cecil Beaton, mirroring Beaton’s opulence and decadence, capturing and creating society women against backdrops of stately halls. And boy does he love a grand hall – Glemham Hall in Suffolk, Eglingham Hall and Howick Hall in Northumberland, locations he returns to again and again. I read somewhere that he generally plans to shoot outside, but inevitably the rain comes and his giant props are squeezed through doorways and into ballrooms to become the incongruous sets that we expect.

Of course he has an enormous team and credits them for the magnificence of his images: hair and make up artists, stylists, costume fitters, model and prop makers, prop suppliers, painters, set producers, builders and models. And Walker seems to have an affinity with the anti-supermodels of the 1990’s grunge era: aristocratic Stella Tennant, Guinevere van Seenus, Kristen Mcmenamy, Karen Elson, Erin O’Connor, Kate Moss; and he’s partial to a bleached eyebrow giving models an androgynous otherworldly look.

Ultimately, it’s about a childlike quality of innocence and a simplicity that we as adults no longer seem to see. ‘What I am photographing is an imaginary place that never existed but is often connected to something that has already been,’ he says. His portraits are classical: black and white with an often vivid coloured flower, a flash of make-up or a rich fabric adding vibrant colour.

I worked in the industry for a decade and this to me is what fashion is all about: dreams and magic, passion, fantasy, exaggeration, the merging of natural elements with elevated sumptuous costumes. Creating wishes, photographing dreams, story telling. I mean who doesn’t want to hang out in a field in Essex with Tim Burton dressed as Santa Claus?

Words & Pics: Nikki Verdon

The Tim Walker exhibition runs at Somerset House, The Strand until 27 January 2013. Daily 10.00-18.00, Until 21.00 Thursdays. Free admission.