Despite being the least theorised of art forms, photography has led the charge of artistic “progress” for decades. Not by innovating aesthetically, mind, but by readying commercial bait for mindless critical embrace as challenging or politically radical. (For more of this, see The ’90s at Tate.)

Walker’s far too numerous photographs of far too many miscellaneous British LGBTQs are about as exciting as reading the subjects’ Wikipedia entries. Topless actors wear wigs, the odd musician touches herself suggestively. One image, perhaps, falls foul of new porn genre censorship laws: groundbreaking. 

Yet even when budgets permit, Walker remains at best tertiary to LaChapelle, himself tertiary to Pierre et Gilles, who laid the ground for their medium’s commerce-porn-art-activism gravy train. 

NPG believes none of this politics, of course. Who’s conning whom, then? To find out that “queer” now stands for “the establishment” isn’t worth the £25 ticket. Seeing confused out-of-town pensioners, who eat this nonsense up as if it were watercolour still lifes, is priceless.