Wolfgang Tillmans

This coincided with the fall of the Berlin Wall and Europe coming closer together, and nightlife and techno and ecstasy culture seemed…

— Wolfgang Tillmans

There is this looking at the world as shapes and patterns and colors that have meaning, and you can't deny the superficial…

— Wolfgang Tillmans

I think there is something very consoling in feeling lost in space but also feeling grounded, and seeing that all of this…

— Wolfgang Tillmans

What most artists using photography feel that they need to do is to show that they are serious, that they are not…

— Wolfgang Tillmans

Whatever pictures are put into the world, the balance needs to be readdressed, it needs to be observed. That's why I am…

— Wolfgang Tillmans

A photocopier is a camera in its own right. I was fortunate to grow up in the time and culture that I…

— Wolfgang Tillmans

I heard this wonderful quote - "Only the brave show what they love." It's so-embarrassing to approach somebody and say you want…

— Wolfgang Tillmans

I am interested not in individual readings, but in constructing networks of images and meanings capable of reflecting the complexity of the…

— Wolfgang Tillmans

Books have this function that help me to understand the work I've done, to wrap it up. Once it's done, fortunately, it…

— Wolfgang Tillmans

For me, a good portrait shows the fragility and humility of the person, and at the same time a strength, a resting…

— Wolfgang Tillmans

I want the pictures to be working in both directions. I accept that they speak about me, and yet at the same…

— Wolfgang Tillmans

This ongoing coexistence which makes life sensational. The eyes have this ability to flip around what they see from one second to…

— Wolfgang Tillmans

My staged work looks so real that people actually take it for documentary. But, in fact, that is my intention, to disguise…

— Wolfgang Tillmans

For example, you now look at pictures from 1968, they are hugely misleading in terms of standing in as an absolute image…

— Wolfgang Tillmans

Now there is such a closed loop between realness and commercialism that one has to question why do more and more and…

— Wolfgang Tillmans

Sometimes it takes a long time for a picture to incubate. And every time I do that, the rewards are so much…

— Wolfgang Tillmans

In order to engage in an 'experiencing of the world,' one has to physically move oneself to the most diverse places on…

— Wolfgang Tillmans

The true authenticity of photographs for me is that they usually manipulate and lie about what is in front of the camera,…

— Wolfgang Tillmans

This act of piss, which can be considered sexual by some, a pleasurable experience, is at the same time total disrespect. I…

— Wolfgang Tillmans

I think it's much more radical to see and show things as they look instead of making them somehow subversive through alienation.

— Wolfgang Tillmans

On the one hand I follow a vocation because I have an ability that I should exercise, but I want to use…

— Wolfgang Tillmans

Change in my work happens not in revolutions - it's more evolutionary.

— Wolfgang Tillmans

Books have this function that help me to understand the work I've done, to wrap it up. Once it's done, fortunately, it…

— Wolfgang Tillmans

It would be so easy to lose the plot now. It's not about achieving something for its own sake, and taking pictures…

— Wolfgang Tillmans

To look without fear is a good subversive tool, undermining taboos.

— Wolfgang Tillmans