Tim Walker: Story Teller

photos: Tim Walker, courtesy Schirmer/Mosel

An airplane made of baguettes, a castle full of balloons, blue horses, giant human string puppets – these are just a few topics of Tim Walker’s photography. His aesthetic can not be compared to anyone else’s, especially not in the fashion industry. In fact, the only reason why Tim Walker works for magazines like Vogue is because they have the money to make his exceptional ideas come true… In 2012, Tim Walker has published a  book compiling his great work. Get more information after the jump.

The book is called Story Teller, and this title explains what his work is about: He tells stories. In fact, most of Tim Walker’s pictures originate from children’s books. In opulent and colorful collages, he combines themes from the illustrations of various fairy tales. And this is maybe why his photography is so haunting and enchanting: They create a dreamlike fairy tale world that remind us of our own childhood, they bring up pictures from our unconsciousness.

Tim Walker’s wild and utopian imagination seems to have no limits in the real world. In order to realize his ideas, he has put together a large team of set designers, stylists, costume designers and producers. As he generally avoids image editing software, everything that you see on the photos is real. This means: sometimes the production of one single photo takes up to three days. Unfortunately, there are only very few photographers around who have the liberty to work like that.

In comparison to his first major book Pictures from 2008, Tim Walker’s photography has significantly changed in the past years. There is for instance a lot of classical portrait photography, which is rather boring to me; neutral backgrounds and sterile studio light is just not what fits best with Tim Walker’s aesthetic… Additionally, his pictures have become darker and more mysterious: We get to see skulls, spider webs and a bed made of human skelettons. In the past, Tim Walker only showed us his dreams, now he also shows us his nightmares.

Tim Walker, Story Teller
254 pages, 58 Euros
Publisher: Schirmer/Mosel

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