WOLFGANG TILLMANS - KUNSTSAMMLUNG NORDHEIM-WESTFALEN

A comprehensive survey of Wolfgang Tillmans’s expansive visual practice, Wolfgang Tillmans. Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen reflects the artist’s ongoing challenge to the conventional boundaries of photography.

Published in 2013 by Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, the volume accompanies the major retrospective presented between 2012 and 2013 at Moderna Museet. Rather than positioning himself strictly as a photographer, Tillmans has often described himself as a “picture-maker,” approaching photography as only one among many tools for constructing new forms of visual experience.

Across its 240 pages, the book moves fluidly between fashion photography, portraiture, still life, landscape, abstraction, and installation documentation. Iconic works from his i-D magazine years appear alongside portraits of Kate Moss, experimental abstract images, and spatial arrangements that foreground his distinctive approach to exhibition-making.

A central aspect of Tillmans’ practice lies in his treatment of space and sequencing. His installations—carefully planned through models and precise layouts reject hierarchical distinctions between image types, allowing clarity and ambiguity to coexist within dense visual constellations. This publication reflects that sensibility, unfolding less as a linear catalogue and more as an immersive visual field.

Balancing the familiar and the elusive, the book offers a compelling overview of one of the most influential contemporary artists working with photography today.

Publisher: Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen
Year: 2013
Format: Softcover
Dimensions: 21.8 × 28 × 2 cm
Pages: 240 pages
Condition: Very good vintage condition with light age-related wear.