With its fairytale sets and inventive images, Tim Walker’s fashion photography is instantly recognisable. An exhibition opening this weekend at the Bowes Museum aims to show him in a new light, says Steve Pratt 

IT began with a family chat around the kitchen table as former Turner Prize judge Greville Worthington was thinking aloud about artists it would be good to work with on an exhibition.

“I was considering all sorts of artists for an exhibition of photographs and then my wife or my daughter suggested fashion photographer Tim Walker,” he recalls. “I looked at his work long and hard, and thought it would be a good idea and to focus on his work outside his fashion photographs. All the photographs were taken within the arena of making interesting fashion shoots, but he’s just as interested in landscape and interiors.”

Walker’s photographs have entranced the readers of Vogue, month by month, for more than a decade. Extravagant staging and romantic motifs characterise his unmistakable style.

But Worthington believes that Walker, who shot his first Vogue fashion story at 25, is more than a leading fashion photographer.

The current exhibition Tim Walker: Dreamscapes at the Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle aims to show that. For the first time, his images will be displayed in light boxes, giving a new quality of drenched colour to the images.

Worthington sees the venue as a good match for Walker’s work, which fringes on Surrealism – beds float in trees, a flying saucer glides alongside a fox hunt, and giant dolls crash through landscapes “filled with foreboding, where nature frightens rather than soothes”.

The Bowes Museum, created over 100 years ago by John and Josephine Bowes in the French style, offers the perfect place to show Walker’s photographs, says Worthington.

“He’s interested in staging things with props and opulence and imagination, things that have that slightly decadent feel, which possibly has some similarity with the endeavours of John and Josephine Bowes when they built the Bowes Museum. It’s also a very appropriate place to have the exhibition by a fashion photographer because they have collection of textiles and fashion, and have had exhibitions before of Philip Treacy hats and Vivienne Westwood shoes.”

Walker has a North-East connection.

He has used Eglingham Hall, a Georgian house in Northumberland, for many of his fashion shoots. And he also has a house in the region, linking him to Northern landscapes.

The photographs on display were mainly shot at Eglingham Hall, but Worthington has also included several shots from different locations. “They are all sitting quite well together,” he says.

Walker had an exhibition at London’s Somerset House last year to coincide with the publication of his latest book, Story Teller. But Worthington wanted to look at his work in a different way, rather than take that exhibition to the Bowes.

“The Dreamscapes exhibition is a new take on the artist’s work. I convinced him to work with the medium of light boxes,”

he says. “We’ve done tests to find the best way to do it. Technology is changing and we can make light boxes that look like pictures as opposed to big advertising light boxes. We had to make sure it looked right.

“Viewers will be drawn in to meticulously- crafted scenes, otherworldly landscapes which reveal Tim’s regard for British painters such as Eric Ravilious and Paul Nash. His seductive images demand to be read as more than fashion.”

Tim Walker

TIM Walker’s fascination with the make-believe world of fashion photography started early. As a 19-year-old intern at Vogue, he established its Cecil Beaton Archive before studying art and photography at Exeter Art College.

On graduation he worked briefly as a freelance photographic assistant in London before moving to New York as full-time assistant to Richard Avedon.

At 25, he shot his first Vogue fashion story.

He was the recipient of the second Isabella Blow Award For Fashion Creator at the British Fashion Awards (2008) and the following year he received an Infinity Award from the International Centre of Photography, New York, for his fashion photography.

The Victoria & Albert Museum and the National Portrait Gallery, in London, include Walker’s photographs in their permanent collections.

In 2011, his short film – The Lost Explorer – premiered at the Lorcano Film Festival and went on to win the Jury Award at the Chicago United Film Festival. He is also wellknown for his advertising campaigns for Mulberry, Hermes, Valentino and many others.

In October last year, his latest book, Story Teller, was published by Thames & Hudson.

timwalkerphotography.com