tim walker traces five decades of queer activism through portraiture in ‘fairyland’

tim walker explores queer history through 250 portraits

British photographer Tim Walker turns his fantastical visual language toward Queer history in Fairyland: Love and Legends, a major exhibition opening at the National Portrait Gallery in London today, October 9th, 2026. Curated by Susanna Brown and designed by Walker’s longtime collaborator Shona Heath, the exhibition brings together around 250 specially created portraits of activists, artists, performers, and cultural figures, including Isaac Julien, Ian McKellen, and Chappell Roan. The exhibition brings together five years of work with Queer people and their allies in Britain and beyond, reflecting a new direction in Tim Walker’s photography.

On view until February 7th, 2027, Fairyland brings together people whose lives and work have shaped many overlapping narratives of Queer history, moving between generations and connecting the activism of the 1970s and 80s with contemporary voices working across art, fashion, music, film, and politics. Its title reclaims the word ‘fairy,’ historically used as a homophobic slur, as an expression of identity and belonging. Walker approaches this reclamation through the wit, theatricality, and sensitivity that have long defined his photography.

‘Fairyland: Love and Legends’ as a record of queer history

The exhibition opens with portraits of activists who advocated for the right to love during the 1970s and 80s, including founding members of the Gay Liberation Front and Stonewall, among them Olivette Cole-Wilson, Andrew Lumsden, Lisa Power, and Tom Robinson. Walker draws on sixteenth-century Tudor portraiture by Hans Holbein the Younger and Nicholas Hilliard to present these figures as an imagined Queer aristocracy, a reference that places people who have often been marginalized within a tradition historically associated with power, status, and official remembrance.

Other portraits bring together campaigners, writers, and cultural figures whose work has helped make Queer lives visible. Ted Brown, Caroline Paige, Gilli Salvat, and Peter Tatchell appear alongside storytellers including filmmaker James Ivory and author Sarah Waters. The British photographer also asks sitters to bring objects with personal significance to their sessions, allowing individual histories to enter the frame. Author Jane Cholmeley presents the original shop sign from Silver Moon Women’s Bookshop, founded in 1984, while photographer Sunil Gupta holds his camera. Filmmaker Isaac Julien clasps a conch shell associated with his pioneering 1989 film Looking for Langston. These objects offer material connections to the places, practices, and cultural histories through which identities are formed and preserved. Walker photographs many of his subjects against simple white backgrounds, recalling the portraiture of Richard Avedon, whom he assisted in the 1990s, giving the sitters and their chosen objects room to carry the narrative.

remembering the hiv/aids crisis through solidarity

A section of the exhibition addresses the HIV/AIDS crisis of the 1980s through portraits of healthcare professionals, nurses, and musicians who contributed to the response of the period. Those who worked to develop effective treatments and improve care appear alongside artists whose music became part of the era’s cultural landscape, including Marc Almond, Holly Johnson, and Jimmy Somerville. ‘The brilliance of their music boomed despite the fear of mortality and discrimination. I wanted to bring that disco to the ward, to celebrate the tireless work to spread awareness and pursue proper care and solutions,’ Tim Walker describes, placing the relationship between music and activism as central to this part of the exhibition. 

Another central room focuses on the Rebel Dykes, a post-punk collective whose members campaigned for nuclear disarmament, environmentalism, sex-positive feminism, and HIV solidarity. Inspired by Karlheinz Weinberger’s photographs of 1960s biker gangs, Walker creates large-scale group portraits accompanied by a short film in which the women reflect on their community and political work. Their presence brings a collective dimension to an exhibition otherwise built largely around individual sitters.

fashion, performance, and the freedom to become

The second half of Fairyland: Love and Legends explores fashion, makeup and drag as forms of self-expression and Tim Walker’s interest in fantasy takes on a more explicitly performative role. Its subjects include designers Jean Paul Gaultier and Michaela Stark; performers Paul O’Grady, David Hoyle, and Midgitte Bardot; television personalities Alan Carr and Sue Perkins; and actors Ncuti Gatwa, Hunter Schafer, Fiona Shaw, and Ben Whishaw. Musicians Björk, Lady Gaga, Frank Ocean, and Chappell Roan also appear. The exhibition ends with a series of erotic scenes that reimagine fairy tales and nursery rhymes from a Queer perspective, bringing together themes of sexuality, humor, and self-expression.

‘The Fairyland exhibition is me finally placing myself in the queer realm with confidence and greeting all the other friends who live here. Just as I learned from the queer artists who came before me, some of whom I’m lucky enough to have met and photographed here, Fairyland is me saying you are not alone. I want visitors to the exhibition to remember that your difference is your power. It is a precious and beautiful thing,’ Walker says, reflecting on the project.

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project info:

name: Tim Walker’s Fairyland: Love and Legends
photographer: Tim Walker | @timwalker

curator: Susanna Brown
exhibition design: Shona Heath, with support from the National Portrait Gallery
location: National Portrait Gallery | @nationalportraitgallery, London, UK
dates: October 9th, 2026 – February 7th, 2027