Tailoring the British Landscape: Tim Walker’s Stage Designed Fashion Photographs
Résumé
Tim Walker is known for his very British whimsical photo shoots for Vogue or Vanity Fair
and his lack of interest in catwalks and studio pictures (although his curiosity for the latter has
recently grown). Instead, he chooses to challenge indoors and outdoors settings in his
fantastical mise en scenes—whether it is with a Bohemian dinner party suspended in trees, a
giant Burtonian skeleton in a field of crimson roses, a flying saucer gliding along a fox hunt in
the British countryside or a huge doll crashing through the woods in Northumberland. The
open spaces of the British landscape from the West Country to Northumberland and further
North to the Scottish Highlands are Walker’s playground, and when the land is not
immediately there, trees, streams, ponds, glades or snow can be recreated artificially indoors.
Walker unrestrainedly gives life to his visions and uses fashion photography as a tool to
explore his dreams and fantasies. Working with natural light and props, the photographer
reveals the British landscape in an improbable way in punctiliously crafted tableaux vivants
with roots in Surrealism and the traditions of British landscape painting. As pretence is the
creative spur that nourishes Walker’s pictures, a sense of longing for a lost England seems to
pervade his pictures with Neo-romanticism. Drawing from recent approaches in cultural
geography this paper will discuss Walker’s treatment of the British landscape as a social
product, a palpable physical medium and an imaginary cultural representation, questioning
the (re)making process of the British national identity.
Mots clés
Photographie de mode contemporaine britannicité identité nationale paysage Contemporary fashion photography Britishness national identity landscape Plan
Photographie de mode contemporaine
britannicité
identité nationale
paysage Contemporary fashion photography
Britishness
national identity
landscape Plan
Domaines
Sciences de l'Homme et Société
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