The catalogue contains over 100 compelling photographs, from ten magical photoshoots inspired by objects from the V&A's enormous and wide-ranging collection, alongside conversations between the set designers, stylists, hair and make-up artists, models and muses who collaborate with Walker to bring his imagination to life. Previously unpublished behind-the-scenes imagery, revealing Walker's creative process from preliminary sketches, through his detailed research in the labyrinth of storerooms and galleries at the V&A, to his spectacular final pictures, also feature. James Spencer, the central figure in this photo shoot, burst out of his family home and into that world dressed as a beautiful woman. These seeds of escapism are sown into the very house in which you find yourself, reminiscent of the constraints of all our childhood homes.

Each shoot is a total love letter to an object from the V&A, sometimes several objects. My relationship to objects is like falling in love with someone. It relates to how we interact as people, how you become best friends with someone. It's a search for a new friend.—Tim Walker Beyond the exhibition, The Modern Media Gallery in the V&A’s Photography Centre screens Walker’s newest film, The Steadfast Tin Soldier, a ballet performed by Harry Alexander and Jordan Robson, in costumes inspired by paper dolls in the V&A Museum of Childhood. Walker rewrote the original Hans Christian Andersen tale to create a moving gay love story, narrated by actress Gwendoline Christie. Tilda Swinton, Grace Jones, Karen Elson and Grayson Perry feature in largest-ever exhibition on photographer Tim Walker – with over 150 new works inspired by the V&A’s collection.Rather than using historical costumes, I wanted the challenge of using the contemporary fashion Zoe Bedeaux selected, complemented by James Merry’s masks and UV makeup by Hungry. Another room, Pen & Ink, takes the whiplash graphic lines of Aubrey Beardsley’s provocative illustrations from the 1890s as a starting point. A green velvet-clad room displays some of Beardsley’s best-known works, leading into a stark white photographic studio, filled with 10 photographs capturing Walker’s witty take on Beardsley’s masterpieces.

As a fashion photographer, I’ve always been concerned with presenting clothing as something living. It was this concern that attracted me to Dieric Bouts’s The Annunciation. Bouts has a sympathy toward fabric: the dresses worn by the Virgin Mary and the angel feel almost three-dimensional. There is a commitment to depicting something alive and not flat. I want my pictures to live, and I really notice the life in these paintings. In Lucas Cranach the Elder’s A Faun and His Family with a Slain Lion, I’m interested in the comparative nudity and what it suggests about ourselves. In 2016, London’s Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), the world’s largest museum of applied and decorative arts, invited the internationally acclaimed fashion photographer Tim Walker to delve into its vast and eclectic collection. Walker selected an array of “wonderful things,” the art and design objects that served as inspiration for the series of nine photo shoots at the heart of this exhibition. In the same spirit, the Getty Museum invited Walker to explore its collection and embark on a tenth photo session. Photographs inspired by the two paintings Walker chose are on view here for the first time.

Selected Works

At the heart of the exhibition are ten new photographic series that are directly influenced by the treasures in the V&A’s huge collection. The wide-ranging and eclectic collection of this museum for art and design is a source of inspiration for Walker. Together with curators, conservators and technicians he roamed the impressive galleries, depots, and hidden nooks and crannies of the museum in search of objects to spark his imagination. Along the way he encountered luminous stained-glass windows, vivid Indian miniature paintings, jewelled snuffboxes, erotic illustrations, golden shoes, and a 65-metre-long photograph of the Bayeux Tapestry, the largest photograph in the museum’s collection. These and many other rare objects inspired Walker’s monumental photographs in the exhibition. Tim Walker: Wonderful Things, which opens on Saturday, plays with expectations in many ways. At a preview the photographer – whose twisted fairytale aesthetic has made him one of British fashion’s most prominent names – described the show as not a retrospective “but the end of a chapter”.