Tim Walker: Wonderful People

The Michael Hoppen Gallery is proud to present the first private gallery exhibition of Tim Walker’s photography, which has graced the pages of magazines around the world for more than 15 years. 

 

The Michael Hoppen Gallery’s exhibition Wonderful People will celebrate his portraiture, and this show will run alongside the Victoria & Albert Museum’s major solo exhibition. Walker’s images, whilst iconic and much-coveted on the pages of magazines, have a completely different presence as pictures framed on the wall. 

 

Tim Walker and Michael Hoppen have delved through the archives to uncover wonderful pictures of wonderful people in wonderful places – often doing wonderful things! Walker’s portraits bear testimony to his playful and imaginative vision, which conjures extraordinary worlds in which his subjects and friends are immersed. His sitters don’t merely sit for Tim, but are transformed by the roles they assume within his fantastical imaginative landscape. 

 

Tim’s meticulous and eclectic eye for composing portraits is instantly recognisable. The props, styling and framing devices which underpin great fashion photography are turned on their head in these pictures, revealing subtleties of personality and relationship rarely elucidated in his famous sitters. Gilbert and George are shown stiffly suspended amongst their stuffed animal collection, whilst the famous portrait of Alexander McQueen hunched over a skull acknowledges a darker facet of the designer’s character. Whether capturing the many faces of Monty Python or his long-term muse Tilda Swinton, Tim’s richly imaginative tableaux present an irresistible invitation to play before his lens.

 

Tim prefers to use old analogue cameras to make many of his pictures, eschewing the convenience of digital photography that is so much the norm today. We are delighted that this exhibition, and Walker’s much-anticipated V&A show, will at last formally display Walker’s extraordinary talents, and will serve for many as an introduction to this feast of truly wonderful photographs.