Wolfgang Tillmans photographs bodies, parties, landscapes, objects and, at times, forms that represent nothing recognisable. This diversity is not an inventory of subjects: it shifts the question of what a photograph deserves to show. In his work, the everyday becomes artistic material not because everything is equally important, but because the eye selects, juxtaposes and gives shape to what it encounters.
This approach also depends on very simple objects: a printed sheet, a wall, a piece of adhesive tape. The way the work is displayed does not simply serve to present the images. It reminds us that a photograph is also a material object, with a surface, a size and a fragility.
Starting from life without turning it into a diary
Tillmans is often associated with intimate photography. Yet he challenges the idea that his work is a personal diary told through images. In an interview published by the Centre Pompidou, he describes his own experience instead as a starting point for building a narrative in which others can recognise themselves. The distinction matters: photographing those around you is not enough to make a work universal. It is the way the images are selected and arranged that opens up a wider space for them.
His portraits and scenes from everyday life make room for bodies without treating them as subjects viewed from a distance. In an interview with ‘Mouvement’, Tillmans talks in particular about photographing friends and the nightlife of the 1990s. The party images are not merely souvenirs of a cultural scene: they make visible ways of being together, presenting oneself and experimenting with other identities. The intimate context is not erased, but neither does it close off interpretation.
This attention does not mean that he photographs everything, all the time. Tillmans tells ‘Mouvement’ that he does not take out his camera at every party. For him, interest in something comes before taking the picture. This is a useful counterpoint to the contemporary idea of photography as continuous recording: in this artist’s work, a wealth of subjects coexists with selection, and seeing is not the same as simply collecting images.
The sheet of paper is part of the work
The medium is not a secondary detail. In ‘Mouvement’, Tillmans recounts how, early in his career, he was drawn to the photocopier for the transformations it produced: enlargements, visible dots and bands generated by the machine’s operation. These technical accidents made him realise that a mechanical process could convey a sensory experience. He later bought a camera, partly to create images that he could photocopy.
This story sheds light on his interest in the surface. A photograph can seem to open onto a space, but it remains an image laid down on a flat material. The works in the ‘Paper Drop’ series, discussed in the interview, play precisely on this tension: folded paper seems to take on volume, while the image remains a photographic surface. The technique does not disappear behind what is depicted; it contributes to what we see.
Displaying works without frames extends this attention. Tillmans explains that he initially sought a simple, affordable way to show a large number of prints. The absence of frames was therefore not, in his view, a crusade against frames. It made it possible to present paper as a light and vulnerable object, while changing the relationship between the image and the wall. The formats and the gaps between works can then matter as much as the subject in isolation.
Fragility also has a practical conservation dimension. In the ‘Mouvement’ interview, the artist notes that some photographic surfaces, when exposed for a long time, can accumulate particles or be affected by the air. He also mentions large-format prints which, early in his career, were linked to a certificate and the possibility of producing a new version. The work was therefore not always reduced to a single sheet: it involved reflection on duration, reproduction and what is considered the original.
Changing one’s perspective rather than repeating a success
An artist who explores many subjects could end up repeating a recognisable formula. Tillmans describes a different problem: the risk of becoming too skilful in the way he photographs. In his interview with ‘Mouvement’, he recounts looking for a way to see afresh, by travelling to other countries and walking through familiar cities as if they were foreign to him. The ‘Neue Welt’ project is part of this shift.
The point is not to make the images deliberately clumsy. Rather, it is to change the conditions of looking when habits begin to produce results that are too predictable. A familiar place can become strange again if we change our route or our focus; a new country, on its own, does not guarantee a fresh vision. An outward journey is worthwhile only if it brings about a shift in thought.
Digital technology has also changed his practice. In the interview with ‘Mouvement’, Tillmans explains that he remained attached to film until 2011, before learning to work with a digital camera. He emphasises the level of detail that digital technology made possible, as well as the need to get used to an image whose precision initially seemed colder to him. This change shows that a technology does not automatically determine an aesthetic: it offers possibilities to which the artist has to find a response.
Looking at the relationships between images
The diversity of photographic genres in Tillmans’s work invites us not to look for a single key to interpretation. The Centre Pompidou describes a practice that spans portraiture, still life, documentary and abstraction. The artist also says that older images can take on new meaning when placed alongside more recent work. A photograph, then, cannot always be understood on its own: its place among other images can bring out a connection that was not obvious when it was created.
For the viewer, this changes the task. There is no need to uncover a hidden intention or a universal symbol behind every image. We can start with more concrete questions: what is placed next to what? What difference in format catches the eye? Does the paper seem to disappear in favour of the image, or does it become visible? Does an intimate subject take on a different significance when it is in dialogue with a landscape, an object or an abstraction?
These questions do not provide a definitive interpretation. They help us describe what is actually presented to view and distinguish that observation from what we infer from it. In Tillmans’s work, the everyday is neither a theme to illustrate nor a promise that every image is of equal value. It is a field of attention in which photography selects, juxtaposes and gives material form. The eye can then move between what the image shows and the sheet that bears it.
References
Wolfgang Tillmans at the K21 museum in Düsseldorf. Archive image.
