Wolfgang Tillmans

Wolfgang Tillmans (born August 16, 1968, Remscheid, West Germany) German photographer whose images of the everyday, spanning from street photography to portraiture to landscape to still life to abstraction, helped define the visual culture of the 1990s. He is especially known for his seemingly candid depictions of youth, nightclub scenes, and the LGBTQ community. In 2000 he became the first non-British artist to win the Turner Prize.

Lutz & Alex and other early work

Tillmans first experimented with photography in 1987 by enlarging found photographs with a photocopier. He bought his first camera the following year. In the late 1980s he immersed himself in the club scene and gay nightlife in Hamburg and began taking pictures at that time. He submitted those photographs to the British magazine of fashion and contemporary culture i-D, which published them.

In 1990 Tillmans moved to Bournemouth, England, to study art for two years at Bournemouth and Poole College of Art and Design. He settled in London in 1992 and the next year exhibited an unframed photograph from his Lutz & Alex series—casually sexual portraits of two of his friends—at Unfair, an art fair in Cologne, Germany, for emerging artists. The photograph depicts the titular pair sitting in a tree, naked except for what appear to be long raincoats. Years later W magazine described the series’ appeal: “These were attractive but ordinary-looking people in nondescript sites. They looked playful, not artificial. Sexual, not glamorous. It was a flash news report from and for a new generation.”

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As a result of that exhibition, Tillmans’s career took off in Europe. Art book publisher Taschen produced a book of his work in 1993, and Tillmans began exhibiting frequently. He also found success in New York City and exhibited widely while living there in 1994–95 and onward. He continued to rely on i-D and other magazines, however, as a regular venue for his work.

AIDS memorial and LGBTQ advocacy

In 1997 Tillmans created a now well-known series of seemingly mundane images documenting the last month in the life of his partner, Jochen Klein, who died of AIDS. Following Klein’s death, which had a notable impact on the photographer, Tillmans’s work gained a stronger political angle, and he became a more vocal advocate for the LGBTQ communities. His was the winning design for an AIDS memorial in Munich (installed 2002).

Turner Prize

In 2000 Tillmans was the first photographer as well as the first non-British artist to win the Turner Prize, presented annually to a contemporary artist by Tate Britain. He was recognized with the prize for both his photography and his inventive exhibition design. Tillmans is often deeply involved in the display of his work (in print or exhibition). He often organizes his photographs in the form of a grid on white gallery walls, sometimes framed and sometimes hung with clips, tape, or pushpins.

Abstract photographs

In the early 2000s Tillmans experimented with photographic processes to create abstracted works. The series Freischwimmer (2000– ) was made without using a camera. Instead, Tillmans worked with chemicals on photographic paper to create colorful swirling images that he then enlarged on an ink-jet printer for exhibition. Other series of abstract works include Silver (1998– ), Blushes (2000– ), and Lighter (2005– ), the latter of which takes on three-dimensionality.

Profiling Russia’s gay community

In 2014 Tillmans traveled to Russia, where he interviewed and photographed a number of members of St. Petersburg’s gay community, who told personal stories of ostracism by antigay laws. He published their stories and portraits in a special activism issue of i-D magazine.

Frank Ocean and music

Tillmans’s work gained a broader audience in 2016 when his photograph of Frank Ocean appeared on the cover of the American musician’s second studio album, Blonde. The close-up photograph captures the contrast between Ocean’s punk green hair with his seemingly vulnerable posture. He appears to be standing in a shower, shoulders bare, face in his hand, and one finger bandaged. A musical track by Tillmans, “Device Control,” also appeared on Ocean’s visual album Endless, which was released the day before Blonde. That same year Tillmans released more of his own music, including the 2016/1986 extended play (EP) and That’s Desire/Here We Are EP on his label Fragile. The full-length albums Moon in Earthlight and Build from Here followed in 2021 and 2024, respectively.

Between Bridges, exhibitions, and awards

Tillmans’s work has been recognized with numerous exhibitions, including retrospectives at the Tate Britain, London, in 2003 (“If One Thing Matters, Everything Matters”); the Museum of Contemporary Art,Chicago, and the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, in 2006; the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, in 2012; the Museum of Modern Art, São Paulo, in 2012; the Tate Modern, London, in 2017; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York City, in 2022 (“To Look Without Fear”). In 2015 Tillmans won the Hasselblad Award, presented annually to an outstanding contemporary photographer by the Hasselblad Foundation. Beginning in 2006, he operated and curated Between Bridges, a nonprofit gallery located in London through 2011 and in Berlin since 2014. The gallery offered its first artist residency in 2023. In 2017 Tillmans also set up the Between Bridges Foundation to promote democracy, art, and LGBTQ rights.