Inside the Opening Night of the Victoria and Albert Museum’s New Exhibition Tim Walker: Wonderful Things

To anyone familiar with Tim Walker’s work—subversive and transportive images with fairy-tale themes—the magic of the Victoria and Albert Museum’s new exhibition Tim Walker: Wonderful Things is no surprise. The show opened Tuesday night, with a private reception in the museum’s gardens that brought together longtime friends, family, and collaborators including Edward Enninful, Adwoa Aboah, Gareth Pugh, Miss Fame, and Pam Hogg. Guests wandered the empty museum after dark, taking in the exhibition filled with Walker’s enchanting imagery (new and archival images) alongside biographical ephemera from the photographer’s life and re-creations of the extraordinary sets he painstakingly imagines for his photos.

“To work with Tim is an extraordinary thing,” said Aboah. “His heart belongs in the details in things. You are our champion of manifesting fantasies, your everyday thought surpassing our wildest dreams. However to be his friend is a much more wonderful thing. You allow people to feel heard and seen. You advocate for the weird and wonderful in them. Your innate curiosity leads to talks where there is question after question, telling Tim things you may have never dreamed to say out loud but doing so in full confidence of its safety.”

A series of male nudes—challenging visions of masculinity through explorations of flamboyance, homoeroticism, and the male form—sits alongside an incredible Alexander McQueen piece from his Horn of Plenty collection. Fantastical pink monkeys and blue elephants hang above the photos they were used in. A larger-than-life scrapbook features in another room, scrawled with hopes of wonderful things and new beginnings—it’s really the world of Walker.

Making your way around the halls, you could find Joséphine de la Baume, Mary Charteris, and more sipping on Champagne and exploring the artist’s work.

“Every project you work on with Tim is like setting off on a new adventure,” mused Enninful. Something similar could be said of this new exhibition.