Wolfgang Tillmans

Wolfgang Tillmans (born 16 August 1968) is a German photographer.

His diverse body of work is distinguished by observation of his surroundings and an ongoing investigation of the photographic medium’s foundations.

Tillmans was the first photographer, and first non-British person, to be awarded the Turner Prize.

He has been the subject of large-scale retrospectives at the Museum of Modern Art, Tate Modern and Moderna Museet.

In 2023, Tillmans was named one of the most influential people in the world by Time.

He lives in Berlin and London.

Tillmans was born in 1968 in Remscheid in the German area of Bergisches Land.

At the age of 14 to 16, visits to museums in Düsseldorf and to the Museum Ludwig in Cologne acquainted him with the photo-based art of Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke, Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol, which counts among his earliest influences.

During his first visit to England as an exchange student in 1983, he discovered the British youth culture and the local fashion and music magazines of the time.

From 1987 to 1990, he lived in Hamburg; there, in 1988, he had his first solo exhibitions, at Café Gnosa, Fabrik-Foto-Forum, and Front.

From 1990 through 1992, he studied at Bournemouth and Poole College of Art and Design (now Arts University Bournemouth) in southern England.

His photos – from the Europride in London (1992) or the Love Parade in Berlin (1992), for example – appeared in magazines such as i-D, Spex, Interview, SZ Magazin and Butt, and established his reputation as a prominent witness of a contemporary social movement.

The series of his friends Lutz and Alex, also published in i-D in 1992, are considered important photographic documents of the 1990s.

In his early photographs of people, Tillmans portrayed freedom in a different way and he says: "I wanted to somehow represent what was not being represented elsewhere."

From 1992 to 1994 Tillmans lived and worked in London, moving to New York in 1994.

During this time, he began to show more frequently, developing an exhibition style that consisted of nonhierarchical arrangements of unframed photographs pinned or taped onto the gallery’s walls.

Color photographs are placed next to inkjet prints and next to postcards and magazine clippings of his own images, reaching almost to the ceiling and the floor.

He views each exhibition as a site-specific installation, often addressing the exhibition space as a larger composition.

Tillmans’ photographic practice subsequently developed to encompass a wide array of genres.

His portraits, still lifes, sky photographs (e.g. the Concorde series), astrophotography, aerial shots and landscapes are motivated equally by aesthetic and political interests, especially related to homosexuality and gender identity.

Tillmans says of his work: “I take pictures, in order to see the world.” He produces images for installations in three sizes, from small to very large, and either in signed, mounted prints, which must be protected in a frame, or as replaceable inkjet prints that can be attached directly to the wall (the latter generated by a certificate-authenticated optical disc).

They are installed in meticulous wall installations, sometimes combined with photocopies, and magazine and newspaper clippings (for example, in the installation “Soldiers – The Nineties”); or presented in vitrines, arranged in extensive table-installations (“truth study center”).

Operating on the basis of the fundamental equality of all motifs and supports, through this continual re-arranging, repositioning, questioning and reinforcement, Tillmans avoids ascribing any ‘conclusions’ to his work and thus subjects his photographic vision to a perpetual re-contextualization.

After his studies he moved to London and then to New York in 1994 for a year, where he met the German painter Jochen Klein.

From 1995, Tillmans primarily lived and worked in London.

After moving back to England, Tillmans lived with Klein until Klein died of AIDS-related complications in 1997.

He was made co-editor of Spex in 1997.

For the Index Magazine, he shot covers and assignments, including images of John Waters, Gilbert & George, and Udo Kier.

Tillmans was considered the “documentarian of his generation, especially that of the London club and gay scenes” (though he has said "It was never my intention to be seen as diaristic or autobiographical. I was not recording the world around me or my tribe or whatever. There is a big misunderstanding there that still persists to this day." ). Half of his work is staged, with the artist choosing the clothes and the location, as well as setting his models up in their positions.

The 56 photographs of equal dimensions that make up the Concorde Grid were taken in and around London as part of a commission for Tillmans’ exhibition at Chisenhale Gallery in 1997.

During the summer of 1998, Tillmans participated in a month-long residency at the last active Shaker community in the world, in Sabbathday Lake, Maine.

Following a guest professorship at the Hochschule für bildende Kunst in Hamburg from 1998 to 1999 and an Honorary Fellowship at the Arts University Bournemouth in 2001, Tillmans was a professor for Interdisciplinary Art at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main from 2003 to 2006.

Tillmans was initially known for his seemingly casual, sometimes snapshot-like portraits of friends (most notably, fashion designer Lutz Huelle and fellow artist Alexandra Bircken) and other youth in his immediate surroundings and scene.

Since 2007, he has divided his time between Berlin and London.

In 2009, after Tillmans had been using an analog 50 mm Contax SLR camera almost exclusively for over two decades, he turned to digital photography.

Which this two inspire him in his work along with his work in the gay rights movement.(Jobey, 2010).

In 2012, he abandoned film altogether and became a full-time digital photographer.

In an interview that year, he describes the corresponding change from using viewfinders to integrated camera monitors as "completely turning on its head the psychology of photography, which has always been a dialogue between photographer, object and the imaginary image that one is envisioning, thinking, hoping for."

According to Tillmans, the higher resolution of digital photographs correlates to "a transformation in the whole world"; he further explains: "In recent years, everything has become HD, so I think it is inevitable that the overwhelming nature of this information density is reflected in my images. In this way, they again describe quite well my sense of perception today."

Wolfgang has a passion and love for the streets and the clubs.