Tim Walker turns his fairytale-built photography on queer identity and community for the National Portrait Gallery's Fairyland: Love and Legends this autumn.
Tim Walker, who has photographed Lady Gaga and Frank Ocean for Vogue, opens Fairyland: Love and Legends at the National Portrait Gallery, Trafalgar Square, on Friday 9 October 2026.
Walker rose to prominence in the 1990s with a style built from fairytale and adventure. His sitters include Chappell Roan, Hunter Schafer and Miriam Margolyes, for titles including Vanity Fair, W, LOVE and i-D. He builds worlds and puts people inside them: a swan the size of a car, a bedroom filled with soap bubbles, colour pushed until it stops reading as documentary.
For this show he spent five years photographing dozens of activists, performers, artists and writers. He sought out queer trailblazers in Britain and beyond, and turned his fairytale style on queer identity, community and love.
Susanna Brown curates the exhibition. A new book accompanies it, with contributions from Russell T Davies, Shon Faye, Travis Alabanza, Lisa Power and Joelle Taylor.
The show fills the Gallery’s main temporary space until Sunday 7 February 2027. It opens a month after the Gallery’s own Marilyn Monroe exhibition closes.