TIM WALKER'S IMAGINARY PLACES

British photographer Tim Walker’s pictures have appeared on pages of Vogue for the last decade. His pre-college work experience at the Conde-Nast library in London, where he worked on the Cecil Beaton archive became the reason of his fascination with photography. His truly inspiring work that takes its ingredients from fashion, the costumes, the make up, the set design, the background have become one-of-a-kind fantasy settings.

Following his graduation in 1994, he moved to New York City where he worked with Richard Avedon. Ever since he shot his very first fashion narrative for Vogue at the age of 25, he has continued to photograph for the American, British and Italian editions.

Tim walker sees himself as a “daydreamer” who creates fantasies, spaces unaffected by time. The extravagant staging and sense of romanticism are the elements that characterize the magical theatricality of his pictures.

The escapism offered through Walker’s lens of nostalgia is the surprising consequence of his elaborated imagery. His use of nostalgia in his photographs connects the viewer to the present world in a bizarre way.

The success of his story telling is captured in the feel of history in his fictive creations. His imperfect spaces almost offer a room the viewers’ imagination of what could have happened before and the ambiguity of the past becomes a fragile question to answer.

The untidy, unclean, catastrophic splendor of his pictures gives a hint to the viewer that he can look for his own non-existent nostalgia, a reminiscent from his inspiring childhood. Yet the beauty of his pictures lies in the only reality of being undiscoverable by others. Observing Tim Walker’s pictures feels like taking a faraway stare to the unreal world, where Walker’s imagination breathes in the glitter of his tales.

His geographically “location-less” spaces are weirdly too beautiful and perhaps too romantic to be part of. One enjoys gazing through his photographs that portray a sense of hope that the world on the other side, the reality can be more beautiful than what is illustrated. It is the spirit of his flamboyant lands lost in time that triggers an unknown feeling of something in people making him only the unique photographer of our real-time.

Images via timwalkerphotography.com