Wolfgang Tillmans

Wolfgang Tillmans (b. 1968, Remscheid, Germany) is a photographer who lives and works in Berlin and London. His practice encompasses portraits, still lifes, abstract darkroom works, video, and installation, developed across more than three decades and shown in institutions worldwide. He studied at Bournemouth and Poole College of Art and Design (1990–92).

He came to notice in the early 1990s through photographs of club culture and queer communities published in magazines including i-D. Alongside this work, he developed a body of abstract images — the Freischwimmer and Silver series — produced by exposing photographic paper directly to light without a camera. His approach to exhibition installation, which places prints of different scales together without frames, organized by visual and thematic affinity, has itself become a widely recognized element of his practice. He has also produced political work: his foundation Between Bridges, based in Berlin, has organized campaigns and exhibitions on issues including HIV/AIDS awareness and, in 2016, a public campaign against Brexit. His recent Weltraum series focuses on the physical infrastructure of technology companies, shot across San Francisco, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Mongolia.

Tillmans received the Turner Prize in 2000, the first photographer to win. He received the Hasselblad Award in 2015. The retrospective To look without fear opened at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2022 — presenting some 350 works — and traveled to the Art Gallery of Ontario (2023) and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2024). In 2025, he created Rien ne nous y préparait — Tout nous y préparait at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, a site-specific installation occupying the vacated Public Information Library — the museum's final exhibition before its multi-year renovation. Also in 2025: Weltraum at the Albertinum in Dresden, Ausstellung in Remscheid at Haus Cleff in his hometown, and Build From Here at Maureen Paley in London. In 2026: Keep Movin' at Regen Projects, Los Angeles.