Artist

Wolfgang Tillmans

b. 1968 · German

Wolfgang Tillmans came of age in the club culture and magazine world of early-1990s London and Cologne, using photography with the same casual attention he gave to friendship, music, and politics. His work spans intimate portraits, still lifes, abstractions made without a camera, and large-scale prints pinned directly to gallery walls. In 2000 he became the first photographer and first non-British artist to win the Turner Prize.

Tillmans treats the exhibition as a form of writing. He works across scales — snapshot prints beside museum-size inkjets — and refuses hierarchies between subject matter, letting a portrait, a windowsill, and an astronomical image share the same wall.