October 9, 2026 |
Tim Walker has always had a talent for making the improbable look perfectly natural. The prolific British photographer’s evocative images have made him a standard-bearer in fashion photography. For over 30 years, he has conjured worlds of theatrical excess, populated by dreamy, elaborate sets, ornate garments and a cast of unlikely characters that seem to belong to an eccentric dream – blurring the lines between fashion, theatre and fantasy. Now, in Fairyland: Love and Legends, Walker turns his attention to something much closer to home: queerness and history.
Opening at the National Portrait Gallery on October 9, Fairyland: Love and Legends brings together 250 specially created portraits made over five years. Among Walker’s subjects are artists, writers, activists and performers, including Isaac Julien, Ian McKellen and Chappell Roan. Together, the portraits document queer life across generations, stretching from the Gay Liberation Front and the Stonewall uprising to the Rebel Dykes and a new generation of artists and performers. It is a meeting of generations, each with their own stories, struggles and ideas of what comes next.
Walker photographs some of his older subjects in a style inspired by sixteenth-century portraiture, drawing on the meticulous realism of Hans Holbein the Younger and Nicholas Hilliard. There’s something striking about seeing figures rooted in activism and community portrayed in the grand style usually associated with power and prestige. The sitters bring their own histories with them, too. Jane Cholmeley appears with the original sign from feminist bookstore Silver Moon Bookshop, while Isaac Julien holds the conch shell featured in his 1989 film Looking for Langston.
Another theme running through the exhibition is the AIDS crisis, with musicians, healthcare workers and campaigners recalling a period marked by fear, discrimination and loss. But Walker isn’t solely interested in hardship. He also explores what made queer life joyful, capturing the humour, fashion and performance of the time.
The exhibition eventually arrives at a point where it reclaims the word “fairy” as something altogether more expansive. Walker has expressed a desire to “bring that disco to the ward”. Perhaps that phrase gets to the heart of what Fairyland is all about.
Photography by Tim Walker.
