Growing up in the '80s, questions of style and music and youth culture all seemed inherently political - like gay rights issues, dressing up, wearing makeup, arms protests. A lot of attitude and opinions were expressed through clothes, and they all were meaningful. So in that way, I was so excited about the connection between our private lives and politics - who I kiss, how I like to dance.

Wolfgang Tillmans

Categorized in : Meaningful Attitude Growing Up

The true authenticity of photographs for me is that they usually manipulate and lie about what is in front of the camera, but never lie about the intentions behind the camera.

Wolfgang Tillmans

authenticity cameras lying

My work is aimed at creating a world in which I wish to live. Consequently, it is about creating ideals with the aid of realistic techniques. My most fundamental motivation is a desire for unity, fusion and sense of community.

Wolfgang Tillmans

creating motivation community

Always take yourself seriously... it's not the same as being pompous, or overly self-assured, but it is important to understand that the small little ideas that creep up in your mind, often contain the germ of a much larger project. All great art wasn't born as great art. It first needed to be recognized by the artist him/herself. Through his or her belief in it, it became true.

Wolfgang Tillmans

self ideas art

What I'm interested in is happiness with a full awareness of the tragedy of life, the potential tragedy that lurks around every corner and the tragedy that actually is life.

Wolfgang Tillmans

corners awareness tragedy

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. The content can never be disconnected from the surface, and this active interest in surface can never be disregarded from the good art that we admire.

Wolfgang Tillmans

eye world art

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

Wolfgang Tillmans

fragility portraits humility

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

Wolfgang Tillmans

complexity individual reading

Big ideas don't make them selves known as big. They begin with the little, ridiculous ideas that most people would discard or reject. Every successful picture I've done has really been based on taking a very flimsy, fleeting little idea, grabbing hold of it, and taking it seriously.

Wolfgang Tillmans

done successful people

I see my practice as picture making. Whatever is available, I use.

Wolfgang Tillmans

available use practice

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

radical looks thinking

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.

Wolfgang Tillmans

cameras photography artist

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.

Wolfgang Tillmans

real people looks

I heard this wonderful quote - "Only the brave show what they love." It's so-embarrassing to approach somebody and say you want to look at them. But without that risk taking, nothing can happen, so I have to make myself vulnerable. What I think is the unifying aspect in people that I like is that they have a sense of their own vulnerability, and I respond to that.

Wolfgang Tillmans

brave people thinking

This ongoing coexistence which makes life sensational. The eyes have this ability to flip around what they see from one second to another, to see something as an object, and then as a design. That's really liberating, and I try to convey that in my work, that your eyes are free and you are free to use them.

Wolfgang Tillmans

design eye trying

Sometimes it takes a long time for a picture to incubate. And every time I do that, the rewards are so much bigger than what I would have gotten if I had only done the same as I always do. So each time I make an effort and I get out of a lazy routine, it's amazing how big the reward can be. It's listening to those little ideas knocking on the door in your mind.

Wolfgang Tillmans

lazy effort long

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

Wolfgang Tillmans

space feelings thinking

A photocopier is a camera in its own right. I was fortunate to grow up in the time and culture that I did. I was allowed to develop an awareness that the art that really moves me is actually based on an original image.

Wolfgang Tillmans

growing-up art moving

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.

Wolfgang Tillmans

questioning-why choices mean

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

Wolfgang Tillmans

taboo tools looks

The mobility of the eye is such a fundamental treasure that we have, and that coexists with sensation. On the dance floor, you are totally in reality, while also experiencing this dream imagery of changing colors and wet surfaces of skin. Sometimes it's the shadow outline in the strobe light, and in another moment it's the closeup of an armpit that you're looking into. I'm not photographing all the time, but it's something that I actually see all the time, and not just on the dance floor.

Wolfgang Tillmans

eye dream reality