Wolfgang Tillmans: A life for a picture of the world

a photo of Wolfgang Tillmans , definitely. If you no longer know that, you were probably fascinated by photography that you looked for the photographer too late ...

… It could have been a photo of Lady Gaga, a magazine picture from the Berlin Love Parade or from a scene sheet, with a representation of the event in a London In-Club-or simply a photography of beautiful people, or a scene with not quite so beautiful people, contrary to all different shortening, not necessarily a presentation from the gay scene or from the trendy clubs and not with a lot of pale skin: Kate: Kate: Moss is z. B. quite dressed on their portraits, and Wolfgang Tillmans gives completely different photographs, still lifes and abstractions and installations and experimental photographs based on photocopies.

Whatever you have seen, you viewed a work of one of the most important photographers of today, on the "world's best list of art" with 26th place, just rose by four places. Time to take a closer look at this amazing artist:

Wolfgang Tillmans was born on August 16, 1968, exactly 10 years to Madonna. While this opened to New York from the sleepy Bay City in the US state of Michigan to make a career, Wolfgang Tillmans first went to England from the probably no less sleepy Remscheid, as a language student he got to know the British youth culture with great interest.

Tillmans were already interested in photography during this time, photographed and collected photographs, developed an eye for various layout forms and made first contacts with English style and music magazines such as "The Face" and "ID", which he would soon fall back on.

After moving from Remscheid to Hamburg from Remscheid in 1987, the first successes of the "environment -generated" photographer soon occurred (Tillmans: "I became a photographer before I noticed it myself."):

Initial solo exhibitions in cultural centers, regular work for the English magazine "ID" since 1988, Tillmans dipped deep into the just emerging rave scene of Hamburg , and he became the (not necessarily self-called) documentary of the emerging subculture . ID, prince, spex, pace, the trendy scene leaves tore around his snapshots and nightlife portraits, at the end of the 1980s, at the age of 20, Tillmans was financially independent through his photographs of Hamburg's nightlife.

Success and independence are fine, but Tillmans wanted to know more and went to England in 1990 to study at Dorset art at the Bournemouth and Poole College of Art and Design.

He then moved to London in 1992 and in 1994 to New York, where he met painters and photographer Jochen Klein , his partner for the next few years. In 1996 Tillmans and Klein moved back to London, they lived there until Jochen Klein died of his AIDS disease in 1997. Tillmans lived in London for a long time, traveled a lot, and since 2007 he has had his life alternately in Berlin and London.

First recognition as a photography artist

In the early nineties, Tillmans photographs everyone who comes to him in front of his lens, all friends and other young people in his immediate vicinity. Due to his concise portraits, Tillmans became more and more better known.

His photos, for example from the European Gay Pride in London (1992) or the Love Parade in Berlin (1992), published in magazines such as ID, Spex, Interview, SZ-Magazin and Butt-Magazine, which founded his reputation as a prominent witnesses of current social currents. Since then he has been the "chronicler of his generation, especially the London club and gay scene" .

The artistic brilliance of his photos convinced every aesthetically educated, the recordings will soon be described by critics as a style -forming. The series with his friends Lutz and Alex, also published in ID in 1992, are now considered artistic and documentary icons of the 1990s.

The way to your own style is more complex

For Tillmans, this "style formation" was only one of the many stations on the way to their own style, whoever "wants to recognize the world with pictures" will put down other motifs than a limited group of people and with the camera more try more than the immediate, albeit impressively successful illustration of the motif.

This is exactly what Tillmans did, he made photographs of all existing genres and all the genres not yet invented, he used the camera in any way that is conceivable. He photographed the details and the overall view, the concrete and the abstractions, people and things, the little ones and the big things, women and men, the cities and the landscapes, day and night, the earth and the sky, planet and the universe.

He developed all of these photographs in many different sizes and he not only presented them hanging on the wall, but also in the horizontal and as part of installations. Tillmans even researched the photographic representation without a camera by getting to know the chemistry behind the development and making work alone with this work in the darkroom, and he sometimes completely dispensed with the motif in the traditional sense and made the photo paper the center of the presentation itself.

Tillmans used digital photography for the first time for his world tour at the end of the first decade of our century, from which the "New World" (exhibition and book project) In the digital image recording, he was unable to discover any additional benefits compared to photography with his analog Mirrors reflex Klino camera, the view by the viewfinder of the Mirrors reflex camera corresponds the most.

In 2009, however, Tillmans found that the higher dissolution of digital photographs that have now been achieved "a change around the world and that it was only inevitable if the unexpectivity of this information density in his pictures was re-rewinding, the creation of HD recordings describe its feeling of perception quite well".

Please do not come up with the idea of ​​reading from the above paragraph that Tillmans does not follow the progress of the technology, a network of five computers, a high -resolution scanner and a huge inkjet printer for a long time, and there is also a very precisely accurate electronic work directory.

Tillmans cannot only be dictated by the developers of the technology how and when he has to use it, he has also developed his own decision -making competence in this regard and, as a customer of the first generation or not only unpaid, but also even in the pocket of grinding co -developers of immature products is therefore extremely unsuitable.

Success makes confidence - self -confidence leads to success?

In the media, guesses are often made that Tillmans could be annoyed if he is addressed as a "scene photographer" of the nineties. The question arises why Tillmans is addressed in every interview, really in every interview, instead of simply preceding the interview as a background information ...

One could also suspect or suspect something else that is most likely to offer with a view to Tillman's further development: that he has long left the "scene photographer" behind that he was "busy and busy" with a few other thoughts ".

Since the time of People photography, Tillmans has done a lot, learned and taught an incredible amount, visited an unbelievable number of places in the world and created an incredibly much completely different structured art, some probability that he is completely irrelevant whether he is still questioned about this old hat or not.

It could be pretty interesting, e.g. B. if one would ask the Tillmans, which is impressive by calm self -confidence, whether and how much early financial independence promotes the courage to follow and learn your own thoughts and beliefs, which seems important to you, without listening too much on supposedly advisory environment. Hardly anyone can provide any better information about this question than him.

But maybe you shouldn't ask him that ... because early work Tillmans suggest that he had undoubtedly "made" it even without this early financial independence - and many others had to make it without early financial independence and have managed to do the courage in times of a shouting capitalism with many negative consequences for cultural workers.

So: instead of it, a tiny but liberating look at the life of Wolfgang Tillman, which has not been burdened by many consumer goods: Some famous photo of a crumpled garment was only taken because this piece of clothing was hung up there for drying and had produced such an extraordinarily decorative wrinkle during the drying process that it was "portrayed by Tillman's" - the artist revealed in 2003 that he has never had a laundry spider, hopefully that's the way it is, we still want a lot of beautiful fold-knitter mars landscapes!

In any case, Tillmans has long proven that he has more ideas than people to photograph, as impressively as a Tillmans' "People Photography" can be. Tillmans has probably used every opportunity to research his genre, and if not, the possibility that has not yet been tried and tested will surely come up with it in front of everyone else, and he will try it out.

In order to be able to set up this claim almost safely, you only need to look at one of his last exhibitions, or let yourself be carried out a bit into the "Tillmans Empire" on your website, the curiosity and the desire for a variety of topics catch your eye (of course you could just ask him, but Tillmans gives his joy in his work so often in current work, lessons and in interviews that you really do not see him again with such banal questions want to get on the nerve).

Curiosity leads to excursions

If he does not have to do with one of his well over 100 individual exhibitions or around 350 group exhibitions, taught or accepts one of his numerous awards, Tillman's enthusiastic and willing to be corrected by social undesirable developments can also be read on his numerous projects "about his art":

In 2001 he took part in a competition of the city of Munich to design an AIDS memorial, designed a sky blue pillar of hope with a brutal inscription and won, in 2002 he turned a mouse video clip for the single "Home & Dry", which still has cult status today.

In 2066, Tillmans opened the “Between Bridges” exhibition space , in which he shows free of financial intentions (mostly political) art, which in his view is not very paid to.

Knocking people are happy to participate early and early

Tillmans was offered the first visiting professorship at the age of 30, from 1998 to 1999 he taught at the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg.

2003 to 2006 followed a professorship that should have been really meaningful in Tillman's: he taught "interdisciplinary art" at the Städelschule (State University of Fine Arts) in Frankfurt am Main - ie "free art" for students from different media. The Städelschule is considered a pioneer in the efforts to set a fixed class division according to the media, as the zeitgeist has been stipulating for a long time.

Since 2012, Wolfgang Tillmans has been involved as a member of the Academy of the Arts, Berlin, and since 2013 as Member of the Royal Academy of Arts, London, for his art and for the renewable generation.

The artist becomes a critic of his own genre

In the meantime, it can be clearly observed how Tillman's thorough research of the possibilities of recognizing the world through photography flows into knowledge that Tillmans has sufficiently thought out in order to keep them worth it.

Even since the turn of the millennium, his work has often contained reminders to be critical when viewing images and to trust their own eyes, the installation "Bali" is a single collection of attacks against liars and fraudsters that use falsified and incomplete image material for their dogmatic purposes.

"Bali" is also about Bali. Here, an entire conglomerate of unemployed human interventions has ensured that Bali is at the top of the list of threatened coral landscapes (which are not only beautiful, but simply ensure that there are still Bali with its protective function). Tillmans denounces the beautiful image material that pretends to be untouched nature, an almost grotesque lying stylization of the endangered island.

But "Bali" is everywhere, in political reporting and in documentation for international law assessment of war events, in stickers in which Islamic values ​​as those of the western world are clearly presented, in AIDS brochures and in advertising for ideal holiday locations, which are actually almost dominated by the NPD, not only in the picture, but also effectively supported (also from Tillmans provided) language documents.

Tillmans increasingly warns us to keep our eyes open, to get to the bottom of the falsifying image material, including the accompanying writings, and to trust their own common sense.

Tillman's pictures can help us to get the real content on the track, he has been working on it for a long time, and he will not (hopefully) stop:

"Although I know that the camera is lying, I firmly stick to the idea of ​​a photographic truth".

You can find out where you can see current exhibitions and many of these pictures in the article "Wolfgang Tillmans Photography Art" .

More works by this artist and a current exhibition plan can be found on the official homepage: https://tillmans.co.uk/