Welcome to Fairyland.
Tim Walker has spent much of his career constructing fantasy worlds for fashion. For
Fairyland: Love and Legends, the British photographer turns his imagination towards Queer history, bringing 250 specially created portraits to the
National Portrait Gallery after five years spent meeting and photographing Queer people and their allies.
The exhibition begins with those who fought for visibility in the 1970s and 80s. Members of the Gay Liberation Front and Stonewall appear in portraits inspired by Tudor painting, forming what Walker calls his own ‘queeristocracy’. Elsewhere, Isaac Julien poses with a conch shell referencing ‘Looking for Langston’, while writer Jane Cholmeley brings the original sign from the pioneering Silver Moon Women’s Bookshop.
Walker also examines the HIV/AIDS crisis through the activists and healthcare workers who responded to it, alongside musicians including Holly Johnson and Jimmy Somerville. A room devoted to the Rebel Dykes takes inspiration from Karlheinz Weinberger’s photographs of biker gangs, with an accompanying film recounting their activism.
Then Fairyland lets loose. Fashion, make-up and performance take over through portraits of figures including Ncuti Gatwa, Hunter Schafer, Paul O’Grady and Chappell Roan, before nursery rhymes and fairy tales receive a decidedly adult rewrite in the final room. Ian McKellen, Miriam Margolyes, Björk and Lady Gaga are among many more appearing along the way.
For Walker, the exhibition marks a particularly personal turn: a photographer long associated with fantasy finally placing himself inside his own Fairyland.
