“I’d never talk to someone and say, ‘Stand here, face the light, pose like this…’” Walker pauses, making his point explicit: “So yeah, I owe everything to Avedon.” “This afternoon there will be a bunch of balloons being sold and they are going to be floating around and someone’s bought a balloon and a child is taking them away,” he muses, as we head downstairs to a café. He has no idea how the photographs will turn out, but he is already toying with Avedon-style scenarios to create a world and coax performances from the models. His clothes – black T-shirt, shorts and Nikes – are both less strange and less ‘fashion’ than you’d expect. Walker is slim, his dark hair and beard trimmed to the same length. Tjærandsen won the prestigious L’Oréal young talent award and, overnight, gained 25,000 Instagram followers. Catwalk footage of the designs, which look like huge inflatable orbs until they are deflated by the wearer and turned into dresses, went viral this summer. Today’s images will feature models wearing extraordinary rubber “balloon” creations designed by Fredrik Tjærandsen, a Norwegian just graduated from Central Saint Martins who has come along to watch. On the day we meet, he’s at a studio in east London preparing a shoot he hopes will be the final piece of work for a new exhibition at the V&A called Tim Walker: Wonderful Things. Photograph: Tim Walker/Tim Walker Studioīut Avedon, who died in 2004, is never far from Walker’s mind. Tilda Swinton, ‘Mr James’s Daydream’, Las Pozas, Mexico, 2012. The scale is off, or the colours are psychedelic, or there are a pair of white horses galloping through an English stately home or the actor Margot Robbie in pink latex is poised to bomb down a slide into a cracked egg, or a model is sitting in a biplane made from a baguette. His work, found in magazines such as Vogue, W, Love and i-D, often exists in a surreal realm somewhere between a dream and a nightmare. I was a very tragically bad photo assistant, very slow, and the people that worked for him were very quick, fiery and technically uber-experienced.”Īnd, really, you probably wouldn’t instinctively link the two photographers: Avedon is best known for his starkly lit portraits, often set against a minimalist white background Walker, on the other hand, has a more whimsical, fantastical aesthetic. “He actually fired me,” says Walker, laughing. Walker didn’t stay long with Avedon, only a year. There’s a worm on the floor and you’re fighting for that worm.’ Very simplistic, childlike scenarios that were very immediate.” You can see how this played out: in one image from the shoot, McMenamy threatens Auermann with a spike-heeled shoe in another, Auermann throws a punch while McMenamy laughs in her face. “When Kristen and Nadja came out in two little black suits, he was like, ‘Oh, I think you’re crows and you are on a branch. How so? “Dick would give them a story,” Walker replies. I didn’t hustle enough, I was a very tragically bad photo assistant.’ Photograph: James Stopforth/Tim Walker Studio He’s shy and a little dreamy, but he is noticing everything. His main responsibilities are changing light bulbs, emptying wastepaper bins, getting food for everyone. He is Avedon’s fourth assistant, meaning he defers not only to the photographer but to a third assistant, a second assistant and a studio manager. In the background, meanwhile, a skinny, somewhat pasty Englishman, not quite 25, looks on. Avedon – whom everyone calls “Dick” – sets his large- format, 10x8in plate camera low, shooting upwards, making Auermann and McMenamy seem even more like Amazonian deities. Their frocks and suits are bold, body-conscious, all shoulders and boobs: the acme of power dressing. Both “supes” are almost 6ft, and their hair has been teased upwards, like a skyline, to add another couple of inches. In Richard Avedon’s studio, a converted fire station on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, Nadja Auermann and Kristen McMenamy are being shot for the new Versace campaign. I t’s 1995 and supermodels are not getting out of bed for less than $10,000.
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