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Your ultimate guide to Wolfgang Tillmans

www.dazeddigital.com /photography/article/34353/1/your-ultimate-guide-to-wolfgang-tillmans

Lutz & Alex holding cock, 1992Photography Wolfgang Tillmans, taken from the July 2010 issue of
Dazed and Confused

Born in 1968 in Remscheid, Germany, Wolfgang Tillmans held his first exhibition a series of large distorted

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photocopies in a caf in Hamburg while undertaking community service. After moving to London in 1990, he
became infamous for his candid portraits of LGBT youth, club culture, friends, lovers and political protests.
Published in magazines like Dazed, i-D, Interview, Purple, Spex and The Face, alongside internationally
exhibiting in galleries and museums, Tillmans innovative practice soon shot to fame, winning the Turner Prize in
2000. He was also awarded Kulturpreis der Deutschen Gesellschaft fur Photographie in 2009 and the
Hasselblad Award in 2015.

A photographic polymath, Tillmans is known for his diverse range of subject matters and the democratic use of
materiality, often resulting in site-specific installations. He is also engaged with the processes of photography,
pioneering digital printing technology, and using chemical processes in the darkroom to create evocative
abstract works. The following is a 26-point guide to the quintessential lens-meister of the zeitgeist.

Iguazu, 2010 Wolfgang Tillmans, courtesy Tate Modern

A IS FOR ABSTRACTION

In 1998, Tillmans published his first set of abstracts a series of sixty unique prints on colour negative
photographic paper in collaboration with the art journal Parkett Art. The signed and numbered edition
corresponded to Parkett 53. The images were darkroom accidents, experiments and interventions, that Tillmans
had been collecting since he began colour printing in 1990. Intrigued by the semi-abstract images, he began
working with exposure in a more controlled manner, moving away from his figurative representational works into
a more uncertain form of visual language - as if he was drawing with light. In later series produced in the 2000s,
such as Blushes (2000) or Freischwimmer (2003), Tillmans plays with abstract gestures, using flashlights and
lasers to create sweeping washes of soft colour.

B IS FOR BETWEEN BRIDGES

Tillmans founded his non-profit exhibition space Between Bridges in East London in 2006. Situated on the
ground floor of his studio in Bethnal Green, the gallery opened with an exhibition of work by David Wojnarowicz
the artist and Aids activist. The ethos of Tillmans curatorial programme was generated around showcasing
political artists who had been marginalised by the establishment due to controversy, artists who had died without

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much recognition, or those who werent commercially viable to the art market. Other exhibitions included the
work of Sister Corita Kent, and Jenny Holzers Truisms. Between Bridges closed in London in 2011, but re-
opened in January 2014 in Tillmans current home Berlin. Last spring, Tillmans announced that he wanted to
dedicate the space to addressing the ongoing European migrant crisis, in order to organise political activity from
within the art community.

C IS FOR CLUB CULTURE

Tillmans has always been a great champion of the acid house and techno clubbing scenes his large format
photographs of male and female genitalia currently hang in Panorama Bar in Berlins infamous Berghain. In the
2002 Phaidon monograph about the artist, he comments in an interview with Peter Halley that in 1988, while
living in Hamburg, he started to go out tons and take ecstasy and that became this all-encompassing experience
(he) wanted to communicate (about) how exciting Hamburg was at the time. Tillmans bought a flash for his
camera, went out clubbing, and sent the photographs to i-D magazine. These images ended up being the first
photographs that Tillmans had published. Soon after, a local magazine called Prinz commissioned him to take
club pictures. Similar stories ran in Berlins iconic Spex magazine. In 1991, Tillmans produced another i-D story
with former editor and cultural writer Matthew Colin. Titled Techno is the sound of Europe, it featured the
varying scenes in Belgium, Ghent, Frankfurt and London.

D IS FOR DEGREE ZERO

Jan Verwoert, the Berlin-based art critic and cultural theorist, has discussed Tillmans style through the degree
zero of photography - one lens, no retouching, no special lights; he just points and shoots. The photograph is
also a functional record and document of a moment, rather than purely a significant aesthetic object in its own
right. In his essay Picture Possible Lives: The Work of Wolfgang Tillmans, Verwoert writes, through the
deliberate reduction of his photographic style to a basic economy of means one type of camera, one type of
lens, no theatrical light effects Tillmans approximates a degree zero of photography. His work aims at the point
where a photo is taken and an image emerges.

E IS FOR EUROPE

Motivated by the contentious EU referendum debate that raged across the United Kingdom, Tillmans designed a
series of posters that backed the Remain campaign. On his website, he explained, The reasons why I felt
compelled to get involved in the UK-EU referendum are personal my lifelong involvement with the UK, my love
for the UK and its culture, music and people, my careers groundedness in Britain and the always warm welcome
I felt here as a German. I see myself as a product of the European post-war history of reconciliation, peace and
exchange. Tillmans created a free zip file of posters, which were available to be downloaded, printed at home or
at work, shared on social media, or made into t-shirts. Tillmans himself handed out these t-shirts, encouraged
people to wear them, and almost exclusively posted content relating to the campaign on his social media
channels. He was also notable for using both the Remain and Leave hashtags in order to bombard the Remain
campaign with positive posts. As a result, the striking visual campaign was readily picked up beyond the art
community, and quickly became iconic symbols of the STRONGER IN movement.

Read an interview with Dazed founder, Jefferson Hack, and Tillmans here

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VOTE REMAIN 23 JUNEvia tillmans.co.uk

F IS FOR FRAGILE

Fragile is the name of Tillmans music project and alter ego, in collaboration with band members Juan Pablo
Echeverri, Jay Pluck, Kyle Combs, Tom Roach and Daniel Pearce. The EP 2016/1986 was released first,
followed by Device Control (which featured on Frank Oceans visual album Endless), and Thats Desire/Here We
Are came out at the end of the year. As part of Thats Desire/Here We Are, Tillmans also directed, shot, and
released a visual album in which starred Hari Nef and Karis Wilde, among others. The 2016/1986 EP in
particular exemplifies how important music is to Tillmans. This record features on its B-side three songs recorded
in 1986 in his hometown of Remscheid, whereas the A-side features two pieces recorded in 2015-16.

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G IS FOR GRIDS

The use of grids are a reocurring theme in Tillmans work. For his commission at Londons Chisenhale Gallery in
1997, Tillmans created a series of 56 colour photographs of equal dimensions, which he arranged in a grid four
rows high and fourteen columns wide. Titled Concorde Grid, the images recorded the daily passing of the
Concorde aeroplane, and were shot in a wide range of locations, including private gardens, parks, railway
tracks, and the fence around Heathrow airport. In 1998 Tillmans created another grid work Total Solar Eclipse
Grid which documented 21 photographs of an eclipse. Snow/Ice Grid (1999) was conceived from multiple
images of trampled and melting ice and snow.

H IS FOR HAMBURG

After finishing school in 1987, Tillmans moved from his hometown of Remscheid to Hamburg to carry out 20
months of community service. The draft still existed in Germany and in order to avoid military service, one had to
stake their position as a conscientious objector and carry out community service instead. As Berlin wasnt yet
part of west Germany, Tillmans moved to the next biggest city Hamburg. After ten months working for a mobile
social health service, Tillmans moved to operating the switchboard of a different charitable organisation. Here, he
began to utilise the office photocopier to create large zoomed in or distorted photocopies of images from
newspapers or other sources. After approaching the owner of a small gay caf, Tillmans displayed these works
on their walls in triptychs of A3 photocopies. This marked his first exhibition.

I IS FOR INSTALLATION PRACTICE

Tillmans practice of hanging the work, often unframed, with tape, nails, and bulldog clips, has become an iconic
and recognisable part of his oeuvre. He expanded on his practice in conversation with Peter Halley in the 2002
Phaidon monograph, Id never pin a photograph, because when you pin it you pierce the corner. So I found this
tape with which I can tape a picture to the wall without it even touching the surface of the emulsion, and I can
remove the tape afterwards and the print is totally untouched. I pin the magazine pages with steel needles,
because if you tape a magazine page, you can never safely remove the tape, it always tears. I use this made-up
logic in terms of how I present the stuff, how I fix it to the walls. Tillmans is interested in the vulnerability of the
photographs, and how that affects the visual experience each object should be treated on individual terms due
to its size, shape, or texture. He tends to work on an installation over the course of week in night and day shifts;
Ill work on it, then leave, then come back fresh, have a new angle on it, change the whole thing, and so on, until
the installation settles into a shape that gives me the sense that I cant add to it or change it; only then do I feel
its finished.

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paper drop (Roma), 2007Photography Wolfgang Tillmans, taken from the July 2010 issue of Dazed
and Confused

J IS FOR JOCHEN KLEIN

Tillmans lived in New York briefly in the 1990s. It was where he met and fell in love with fellow German artist
Jochen Klein in 1994. Tragically, Klein, who didn't even know he was HIV positive, fell ill with Aids-related
pneumonia and died suddenly in 1997. There are prevalent political messages about sexuality intertwined in
Tillmans imagery. In conversation with Peter Halley, Tillmans rationalised, All my work has been made with the
knowledge of possible death, because since 1983 Ive had an acute awareness that this disease, Aids, affects
me. In 1985, after my first few sexual encounters, when I was 17, I had this big Aids fear. Thats actually crazy,
when you think of a 17-year-old schoolboy lying in bed thinking hes going to die The threat of Aids has been
with me for all my active sexual life. The death of Klein marked one of the darkest periods in Tillmans life, but he
continued to work. The pictures from that time, I never explicitly said what they were about for example
Untitled (La Gomera) (1997) or pictures in Munich, some still lifes, our hands clutching on the day he died.
Theres a self-portrait, when Im starting to ask, Why am I here? Theres a still life of the food that we took on
the plane from the last hotel night back to hospital. In 2001, Tillmans won a competition to design the Munich
Aids Memorial, which is inaugurated the following year. He also edited a book, Why We Must Provide HIV
Treatment Information (2006), in collaboration with Londons HIV-iBase and the Treatment Action Campaign in
South Africa.

K IS FOR KUNSTHALLE ZURICH

Kunsthalle Zurich hosted Tillmans first institutional solo show in 1995. The exhibition combined black and white
portraits of youth culture, with landscapes, city scenes, and clippings from books, magazines and newspapers. In
2012, Tillmans returned with a new series of work, titled Neue Welt (New World), exhibited at the gallerys new
premises at the Lwenbrukunst. Tillmans collaboration with friend and fellow artist Isa Genzken, Science
fiction/hier und jetzt zufrieden sein, was also installed at Kunsthalle Zurich in 2003. In an engaging install,
Genzkens mirror glass wall units stood alongside his large-scale photographs.

L IS FOR LUTZ AND ALEX


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In 1992, Tillmans took a series of photographs of his two best friends, Lutz and Alex. These images, particularly
Lutz and Alex sitting in the trees, have become some of his most revered and recognisable. In the autumn of
1992, the gallerist Maureen Paley decided to take a large inkjet print of Lutz and Alex sitting in the trees to
Colognes unofficial art fair: the Unfair. Tillmans accompanied her in order to install it and was introduced to the
German gallerist Daniel Buchloz. On the strength of that photographer and the others in the series, Tillmans was
invited to do a show at Buchholz & Buchholz in Cologne in 1993.

Lutz & Alex holding cock, 1992Photography Wolfgang Tillmans, taken from the July 2010 issue of
Dazed and Confused
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M IS FOR TATE MODERN

Tillmans first exhibition at Tate Modern opens on the February 11. The chronology of the exhibition will start in
2003, representing for the artist the moment the world changed, due to the invasion of Iraq and the international
anti-war demonstrations. The survey show will play to host to a rich variety of media photographs, video, digital
slide projections, publications, and recorded music. In tandem, Tillmans has also been invited to take over the
vast performative environment of the Tanks for ten days in March. An immersive new installation featuring his
recent work in music and video, interspersed with live collaborative events, will explore the capabilities of the
sound system and the acoustic qualities of the space.

N IS FOR NON HIERARCHY

In the sixth edition of his The Conversation Series books (published in 2008), curator Hans Ulrich Obrist
referred to Tillmans as part of a generation of artists who looked for new ways of distribution in times of a
severely depressed art market. Many critics have misunderstood Tillmans relationship with magazines, often
thinking that he worked as a commercial photographer and then became an artist off the back of that. Rather,
Tillmans has always been an artist, but used magazines as ways to distribute his work, as he found them an
equally valid artistic medium. This non-hierarchy also trickles down into his exhibitions; magazine pages will be
shown alongside original photographs. This was particularly apparent in the 1993 Buchholz & Buchholz
exhibition (see L), which was re-staged as part of the The Nineties exhibition at Frieze London 2016. The
original installation consisted of over 60 unframed c-prints, photocopies and magazine pages. In a lecture at the
Royal Academy of Arts in 2011, Tillmans explained that the use of different materials and means of reproduction
was to show the equivalents between a hand-printed fine photographic print that I made with my own hands,
and a magazine page which has been printed for 30,000 copies, but which had been laid out and designed by
me.

O IS FOR OBSERVING CAUSE AND EFFECT

In Phaidons Ten Questions for Wolfgang Tillmans in 2008, he was asked if he had a description of his work that
felt close to his heart. Tillmans answered: its an ongoing process of observing cause and effect, a locked and
unsolvable coexistence of intentions and results The moment I put a camera between my eye and the sitter
something happens in the cheeks of the sitter, maybe the mouth makes a certain move. And thats exactly what I
observe. If you take a picture of a window you observe what happens with the reflection when you move. Is my
presence getting in the way of an experience? Or am I making an experience possible? I think if we all paid
attention to what causes what it would be a much greater world.

P IS FOR POLITICS AND PRINTED MATTER

Tillmans is also known for his table-top installations, which use cuttings from the media and hoarded ephemera
to comment on political issues. He has collected newspapers since he was a child but only started incorporating
them into his work in 1999 with the Soldiers series. The publication featured multiple photographs of soldiers in
order to press the spectator into considering Why are we looking at them? And why are we being fed
photographs of soldiers doing nothing? Tillmans Truth Study Center was first exhibited at Maureen Paleys
gallery in 2005. Photographs, cuttings from newspapers and magazines, pamphlets and flyers were exhibited
under glass on custom-made wooden tables. The exhibition sought to draw attention to political ideologies,
religious disputes, etc. Images ranged from nude studies, to candid personal portraits of Tony Blair, to
astronomical views of planet Venus passing over the disc of the sun. The Truth Study Center project travelled to
various international institutions, the content changing slightly with it each time.

Q IS FOR QUEER CULTURE

In a 2010 issue of Dazed Magazine, Tillmans candidly discussed formative moments for him growing up as a
young gay man; I came to London for the first time in 1983 on a language trip and saw Culture Club play. I think
that was a lucky moment to grow up as a latently gay boy, in a time where the whole of pop music was about

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sexual ambiguity. It wasnt called gay, it was just stylish. It was all about making clothes and putting on make-
up I wore a hat made from perspex melted in my mothers oven The first love of my life was the keyboard
player of Bronski Beat. I guess I was some kind of groupie. We had a night of romance in Cologne when I was
16. In 1990, Tillmans moved to London with Lutz and Alex, going on demonstrations about the Criminal Justice
Bill or the Anti-Nazi League; It felt as if hedonism and activism were not exclusive that was my strong personal
belief. This fluid relationship between hedonism and activism is relevant to Tillmans approach to documenting
queer culture. Alongside representing his lovers, friends, and the ecstasy of clubbing, he has also produced work
exploring the complexities of LGBT life in Russia, or documenting protests both here and abroad (eg. NICE
HERE, but ever been to KYRGYZSTAN? Free Gender-Expression WORLDWIDE, 2006.)

NICE HERE. but ever been to KYRGYZSTAN? Free Gender-Expression WORLDWIDE, 2006
Photography Wolfgang Tillmans, taken from the July 2010 issue of Dazed and Confused

R IS FOR THE ROYAL ACADEMY

The Royal Academy in London is steered by a committee of nominated artists and architects. Known as the
Royal Academicians, they are all creative practitioners who help support the vision of the institution. Tillmans
was elected as a Royal Academician on 11 December 2013. All Academicians are classed as architects, painters
or sculptors. Like fellow photographer Gillian Wearing or the filmmaker Tacita Dean, Tillmans holds membership
under the expanded category of painter.

S IS FOR SUBCULTURE AND SUBJECTIVITY

In his essay, Picture Possible Lives: The Work of Wolfgang Tillmans, author Jan Verwoert considers how the
self is tied up with the social environment: Instead of only looking at how society shapes the individual, it
seemed productive also to explore how, on the level of the everyday, personal lifestyles are organised as modes
of resistance in the midst of a normative capitalist society. Tillmans is an artist who is fascinated in the relation
between the different facets of peoples lives how people concurrently exist politically, sexually, spiritually, and
so on. Tillmans is often reserved when discussing the meaning of his works. The nature of his photography
encourages the viewer to feel closer to their own experiences by looking at images of others, rather than trying to
get inside the vision of the artist. I want the pictures to be working in both directions, the artist once said. I
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accept that they speak about me, and yet at the same time, I want and expect them to function in terms of the
viewer and their experience.

T IS FOR THE TURNER PRIZE

In 2000, Tillmans became the first non-British artist to win the Turner Prize. It also marked the first time that an
artist working in the medium of photography had won. The other artists shortlisted were Glenn Brown, Michael
Raedecker and Tomoko Takahashi. The main work that Tillmans showed was Concorde Grid (1997) (see G). The
jury praised the way in which Tillmans work engages with different aspects of contemporary culture, while
challenging conventional aesthetics, taking photography in new directions in both his methods of working and in
the presentation of his work. They were also impressed by his ability to look at often unregarded aspects of the
everyday and create striking images from them.

Concorde L449-11, 1997Photography Wolfgang Tillmans, taken from the July 2010 issue of Dazed
and Confused
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U IS FOR USING A DIGITAL CAMERA

In 2009, after using an analogue 50mm Contax SLR camera for two decades, Tillmans began experimenting
with digital photography. In 2012, he abandoned film altogether. In an interview with Dazed Digital in 2013, he
explained, When I realised that the lens that I had on my 35mm camera would perform exactly the same way on
the new digital camera, I realised that it would be nostalgic to stay with the old. I thought: Let's learn on my own
terms in my own time, how to speak this language. According to Tillmans, the higher resolution of digital
photographs correlates to a transformation in the whole world 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.

V IS FOR VIDEO

In 1987, Tillmans began making videos. The technique is similar in many of them: the camera barely moves, the
sound is direct, and the only cuts occur when the camera is turned on and off. Lights (Body) (20002002), was
Tillmans first video installation. It featured static shots of the light effects inside an empty dance club, while the
bass pulse of the Hacker Remix of Don't be Light by Air throbbed underneath. In 2002, Tillmans filmed a video
clip for Pet Shop Boys single Home and Dry. The video was composed of shots documenting the mice and rats
living in Londons Underground.

W IS FOR WORLD TRAVEL

I take pictures in order to see the world. In recent years, Tillmans has travelled outside of his dark room and the
European bubble and travelled the world. The Neue Welt (New World) series saw him returning to a
documentary style reminiscent of his output during the 1990s. After spending a decade from 1999-2009 working
on abstract images and more conceptual projects, Tillmans was interested in what the world looked like20 years
after he first started taking pictures. He described to Dazed in 2013, I choose mythical places from childhood
memory like Papua New Guinea, or the furthest away fields like Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuego, the most southern
city in the world. But then also theres Nottingham, theres New York, theres London. It wasnt about exotic
places per se; it was about looking at everything in a new way.

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TukanzPhotography Wolfgang Tillmans, Berlin/London

X IS FOR GEN X

Generation X is the demographic cohort that follows the Baby Boomers. Although there are no precise dates for
when this cohort starts or finishes, it is commonly agreed that they were born between 1966-76 and came of age
between 1988-94. Tillmans is part of this generation. His work, alongside the work of other artists such as
Corinne Day, Collier Schorr, or Ryan McGinley, can be seen to have captured the culture and spirit of the 1990s.
The relationship between their real lives and the world depicted through their lenses were blurred, favouring
grunge, tableaux, and representing passion and politics on an equal level.

Y IS FOR YOUTH

A genuine and refreshing image of youth culture is a prominent aspect of Tillmans work. Rather than using tired

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clichs, individuals or alternative scenes are shown in an honest light. Tillmans photographs will feature in the
upcoming show Eternal Youth opening at MCA Chicago in March 2017. Alongside work by Larry Clark, Mona
Hatoum, and Francesca Woodman, the exhibition considers how artists have representing youth since the
twentieth century. Focusing predominantly on the 1990s onwards, how have images of youth in the western
world elicited both desire and fear, responding to social, cultural, and political shifts such as HIV awareness and
gender bending transition (examining) the different ways youth is portrayed as simultaneously innocent and
desirous revealing the treatment of young bodies as sexualised, radical, and medicated objects.

Z IS FOR ZEITGEIST

TASCHEN refer to Tillmans as the lens-meister of the zeitgeist. This is a word constantly attached to Tillmans
work, perpetually capturing the spirit of the time through his photography. In a 2011 conversation with Bob Nickas
in Interview Magazine, Tillmans discussed how these iconic images can be misleading; when, for example, you
now look at pictures from 1968, they are hugely misleading in terms of standing in as an absolute image of the
time. Because maybe two percent of the people looked the way that we now associate with that time I made
extraordinary things look not particularly staged or extraordinary. Two people sitting naked in a tree is hardly a
documentary picture (Lutz and Alex sitting in the trees, 1992), but it was somehow instantly seen as a picture of
the zeitgeist, of the reality. The advocacy of artistic social commentary LGBT rights, homelessness, the
refugee crisis all filter into his mediation of the cultural zeitgeist. The reality of the world is reflected in his lens,
Tillmans isnt going anywhere soon.

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Dennis, 1995Photography Wolfgang Tillmans, taken from the July 2010 issue of Dazed and
Confused

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