Dream catcherOn the eve of the biggest exhibition of his career, master image-maker
Tim Walker talks to Robin Muir about high fashion, wild fantasy and
taking his first steps at Vogue. Self-portrait by Tim WalkerA
t the tail end of the 1980s, a soft-spoken 17-year-old
from Guildford arrived at Vogue House as an intern
with no idea what he wanted to do. After a stint in
accounts, Tim Walker made his way down the seven-
floor building, until he reached the bottom, the basement
archive, where I was working as Vogue’s picture researcher. He
had expressed an interest in photography: he was in the right
place. I set Walker to work cataloguing our holdings of Cecil
Beaton’s photographs, a project that had long needed doing.
Little did I then know how Beaton would weave his magic on
this uncertain teenager, sowing the seeds of a career that would
see him become one of the most eminent, imaginative
photographers of his generation.Thirty years later, at his headquarters on a quiet and
unassuming street off Bethnal Green Road, I am watching
as Tim prepares for his new solo exhibition at the V&A, his
biggest ever by some distance. He is crouching over a sizeable
maquette of the space, every picture meticulously scaled down
and stuck to the walls of the galleries, which even in miniature
are still large enough for Stanley, the office’s long-haired
dachshund, to get lost in.
Tim is talking slowly but enthusiastically – and he will do so
without flagging for nearly two hours. As he rearranges the
pictures, he reflects, “When you’ve taken a picture it’s never ever
how you thought it was going to be, so you see it as a failure.
You think everything is a failure, you really do.” > TIM WALKER STUDIO. DIGITAL ARTWORK: GRAEME BULCRAIG AT TOUCH DIGITAL10-19-WELL-TimWalker.indd 200 02/08/2019 12:09