Tim Walker-In the land of Fantasy

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This photo was sneakily taken at an exhibition of Walker's photography, sets and sketchbooks at the Design Museum, Shad Thames, years ago when I had only just finished school. I see this letter as a sprawling 'statement of motivation', which introduces and explains all of Walker's vibrant madness and playful twist on fashion photography.

Tim Walker is a fashion photographer who often features in Vogue. In fact he has become part of the Vogue elite when it comes to fashion shoots and it isn't entirely ridiculous that I check each issue for his work before I spend my precious student pounds on it. Finding a Walker shoot fills me with a comforting sense of glee. I spend the month returning to his pages to explore the imaginative spaces of his sets, costumes and the story which usually weaves through his work.

Walker is a story teller who explores the limits and extravagances of the fashion world; inspired by fairytale, folklore and those magical suggestions of other countries and cultures we don't quite understand. He fills country houses with Lily Cole's red hair and giant fish, he dies the fur of Cats and paints elephants. He builds giant toys and spaceships and aeroplanes that subvert our ideas of the clean lines and meticulous attention to the details of clothing which we have come to expect from the pages of glossy magazines. With Walker it isn't about the clothes, but he is just so delectable, Vogue doesn't care!

Walker sells us a fantasy world that has come straight from his heart and his head, which is an integral part of passions and influences that come all the way from bedtime stories and dressing up as a child. And it is a fantasy that I embrace with 'glittering eyes' and avid interest. What will walker do next? Which country's folklore will he ravage? Which memory will he uncover and offer us? Look out for him in Vogue!

I remember coming out of that exhibition at the Design Museum with a sense of elation. I thought that I had never felt such a strong affinity with anything in my life. It was as if those photos were mine, as though they had come from my head as well as Tim's. Damn Walker for getting there first.

Kafka on The Shore- Haruki Murakami

I ordered a copy of 'Kafka on the Shore' as a present for my gloomy boyfriend. I boldly claimed that it was 'one of my faves' without thinking twice about the assertion. Then I began to doubt myself; when I was 15 or 16 'Kafka on the Shore' was my first Murakami and an introduction to the genre of Magic Realism. I fell in love with it in so many ways, I got swept up in the magic and the possibilities it seemed to offer for reading in general. Five years later and I have never re-read a book purely for pleasure and I realised that if Tom decided he did not absolutely love the book I wouldn't be able to defend it (or even remember it particularly clearly). So despite my intention to simply 'read vicariously' through Tom, I fell in to Murakami's trap and began reading it again.



I can't tell you why I have never allowed myself the pleasure of re-reading a book, other than putting it down to the breadth of reading lists and depths of bookshelves. I found it deeply indulgent in more ways than one, but if you are going to add a book to your list of favourites it has to merit the indulgence of time and memory. As I began reading 'Kafka' I instantly realised why I had loved it; Kafka Tamura is a 15 year old boy who runs away from home and finds refuge in a library, the hero I once needed. He is a free spirit who loves reading and is wise beyond his years. As it began raining fish and leeches (details that have never left me) I re-experienced the delight of the first showers of magic upon realism. Kafka on the Shore was exciting for me in the way that books before had never been and began an exploration and love of Magic realism.

It is a strange feeling returning to imagined places. The characters and settings returned to me easily; I followed Nakata with a returning affection, met Oshima as if he was an old friend and entered the Komura memorial library only to find I was satisfying a longing I wasn't aware I had. There was a comforting familiarity in the process of reading which was particularly appropriate to 'Kafka on the Shore' where Murakami describes lovers as pieces of ourselves. Meeting our lovers is like walking in to a familiar room and sadness is a natural part of love in the Murakami-philosophy. As Miss Saeki and Kafka return again and again to the shore, both the painted version and the real place, so I returned again and again with pleasure and with sadness. The boundaries of fiction and my reality became distorted and confused as Kafka struggled to understand the meaning of 'metaphor' and to escape the guilt his dreams brought on.

There is enough to be critical about and there are things I will have to defend. I'm not sure if it is clumsy translation but initially Kafka is a difficult to character to accept, in fact all of the characters can sometimes feel as though they have been given soundbites, or monologues of information that are neither fluent nor convincing. Murakami's use of western and european allusions also seem shallow now that I am old enough to notice and understand them too. But love makes you forgive imperfections.

Something new came too; I remembered how the sex in the book had shocked me once, how I felt about Kafka, how I had identified with his frustrations, but I didn't re-experience these things. Miss Saeki who had once seemed like a secondary character, who I had not understood, made me cry. When I stopped being so critical of the book and settled back in to it, I found a new depth. I found something which shocked and touched me at 20 which had passed me by at 15; it was something I cannot describe or explain at the moment perfectly, it is something about that 'return' which Miss Saeki makes, which I was also making. When I read 'Kafka' again in five years I will come back to tell you what it is. But for now I will just recommend the book, and feel a little surer about that recommendation.