Wolfgang Tillmans
Wolfgang Tillmans
Wolfgang Tillmansis a German fine-art photographer. His diverse body of work is distinguished by observation of his surroundings and an ongoing investigation of the photographic medium’s foundations...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionPhotographer
Date of Birth16 August 1968
CountryGermany
deny looking meets patterns shapes
There is this looking at the world as shapes and patterns and colors that have meaning, and you can't deny the superficial because the superficial is what meets the eye.
art
When I was growing up, all the art that touched me was lens-generated, like Gerhard Richter, or Polke, Rauschenberg, Warhol.
danced death line narrow
It's very real, the narrow line between a night danced away and the potential of death around the corner.
diverse move oneself physically places
In order to engage in an 'experiencing of the world,' one has to physically move oneself to the most diverse places on earth.
change work
Change in my work happens not in revolutions - it's more evolutionary.
books function work wrap
Books have this function that help me to understand the work I've done, to wrap it up.
accept both expect experience function pictures terms time viewer
I want the pictures to be working in both directions. I 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.
exercise reality hands
On the one hand I follow a vocation because I have an ability that I should exercise, but I want to use it for a reason, because I don't see that the freedoms that I enjoy are God-given realities. So I have a very healthy, activist general tension in me which feels that no, this is not gratuitous, it is important to keep this in focus.
practice use available
I see my practice as picture making. Whatever is available, I use.
thinking space feelings
I think there is something very consoling in feeling lost in space but also feeling grounded, and seeing that all of this is part of a bigger clockwork
photography artist doe
What most artists using photography feel that they need to do is to show that they are serious, that they are not taking snapshots. To point a camera at something does not qualify you as an artist because everybody has done that.
thinking looks alienation
I think it's much more radical to see and show things as they look instead of making them somehow subversive through alienation or estrangement.
mean questioning-why decision
It would be so easy to lose the plot now. It's not about achieving something for its own sake, and taking pictures for their own sake. But to make conscious decisions and choices, and it includes this constant questioning - Why am I taking pictures? Because really, the world is... it has pictures enough. I mean, there are enough pictures out there.
real people looks
My staged work looks so real that people actually take it for documentary. But, in fact, that is my intention, to disguise the manufacturedness of it. Half of my work, or probably more than that, is staged.