A lazy sunday, spent lying around in bed with the remainders of easter chocolate and a stack of completely frivolous films to watch calls for a little post on tim walker.
As you may have noted from the copious amounts of walker love (including the post on easter below!) i am a bit of a walker fan. What i love most about him is that he seems to encapsulate exactly what it is that draws me most to the world of fashion, which is that fashion is, ultimately fruitless, it's imagination and ideas, read: style, that will stand the test of time. It's a very french way of viewing things, but then also intensely British in a way, what with it being the home of eccentricity and all that.
His sets are always crafted to perfection by Vogue UK's set designer Shona Heath who manages to give Walker a background that is as fantastical as his imagination and yet still infinitely as glamorous as is required by a fashion shoot. His choice of models is always impeccable, and he has a thing for the red heads, (Karen Elson, Lily Cole and Olga Sherer), but has also shoot gorgeous editorials with models like Erin O'Connor, Gemma Ward, Coco Rochas, Agyness Deyn and Jacquetta Wheeler. He is oft-imitated (the Elle US March 09 shoot with the red ballet shoes springs to mind), but never surpassed in terms of pure whimsy and fantasy.
Having said all that, i think that if you stripped away all the wonder about the sets (giant tin soldiers! a frazzled helena bonham carter in front of a huge TV, caterpiller suits and the like), the often larger-than-life styling (remember coco rochas' bubble dress from hussein chalayan?) i just really love the way he shoots. He is equally as good at taking the long, outfit shots that everyone adores as he is at taking the intimate, portrait style shots. And, in fact, he is that good a photographer in my opinion that you don't think he's deliberately taking photos just to showcase an outfit or a model. Sometimes with fashion photography you think it's all about the clothes and nothing else.
Indeed fashion photography necessitates a certain degree of obsession about the clothes, obvious i know. But i think the best fashion photographers treat the clothes as merely another subject within the frame, including model and set and atmosphere. They create a parallel universe where the clothes you wear are as powerful and as important to life as your face, your personality, your environment, your situation... This kind of parallel universe is the sole reason why i read fashion magazines. They are escapism of the highest and most fabulous order, and allow me to revel in a world, even just for a minute or two, that can be as crazy and wild and chic and silly as i like.
He also has a really interesting shooting style. His slightly saturated shots are calm, even when something absolutely crazy is happening in the image (e.g jamie bell and sherer leaping in the air while spraying blue paint in vogue uk dec 08). And calm in a comforting, magical kind of way. As in, don't worry, there's a giant plane in your living room, but everything is alright.
Chocks Away
Photographer: Tim Walker
Model: Lily Donaldson
Publication: Vogue UK March 09
Source: click
There is something magical about this shoot, and not just in the idea of a 1940s war-time gal carrying on with her life while a plane smokes away in her parlour. I think it is Lily's ability to epitomise that english rose so perfectly, and the wonderful styling that hits 1940s without being costumey, and still manages to serve the purpose of showcasing the new seasons, which is essentially what a shoot in the march issue of a magazine is supposed to do.
That shot with the match burning away in her mouth is one of the most quietly beautiful things i've seen in vogue all year, and manages to transcend the novelty of THE prada crumpled silk suit to become something entirely different.
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