“Wolfgang Tillmans doesn’t just take snapshots, he captures how those he photographs reveal themselves to the world,” says Roxana Marcoci, Senior Curator of Photography in the David Dechman Department at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) at New York and curator of the exhibition Wolfgang Tillmans: To look without fear.
Witness, among other things, the huge portrait of Joanne Joseph — better known by the stage name Smokin Jo, the only woman to have received the DJ of the Year award from DJ Mag, in 1992 — which overlooks one of the galleries of the American cultural institution alongside smaller formats, hung scattered on the walls with adhesive tape. This photograph, Roxana Marcoci finds it extraordinary. ” She’s wearing a top in sequins, and the London winter gives her goosebumps, makes her shed a tear of cold. Her presence in the image is incredibly powerful and elegant,” she recalls.
Moreover, Smokin’ Jo (1995) is a manifestation of the avant-garde of the photographer, born in 1968 in a divided Germany. “He has always been a very committed artist, especially with the youth and club culture of the 1990s in Europe,” says Roxana Marcoci. At that time, when few women were scheduled in electronic music events, the English DJ had indeed intentionally opted for a gender-neutral pseudonym. “Wolfgang Tillmans has been exploring gender relations for more than three decades already, long before society took hold of the subject”, she underlines, while today photographers who combine aesthetics and politics are legion.
Mix of genres
Taken ten years apart, and also featured in the MoMA exhibit, Lutz & Alex sitting in the trees and The Cock (kiss) are two other of his most striking photographs which have participated in questioning the notion of gender in the public space. The first in the series Like brother like sister published in the British magazine ID in November 1992, features the German’s two oldest friends. Neither from the same family nor lovers, the two youngsters intercepted by Wolfgang Tillmans have nevertheless been at the origin of an important controversy, simply because of their androgyneity. “People also thought their relationship was incestuous…”, confides Roxana Marcoci.
As for the second, where two men kiss, it went viral following the deadly 2016 shooting at Pulse, an LGBTQ+ nightclub in Orlando. “Some fifteen years before the tragedy, Wolfgang Tillmans asked this question with The Cock (kiss) : “Two men kissing, do you find that disgusting or beautiful?” According to his father, the killer agreed with the first proposal, ”notes the curator.
The title given to the exhibition, To look without fear, makes sense. “We find this quote in a conversation that Wolfgang Tillmans had with the musician and art critic Dominic Eichler for the magazine frieze fourteen years ago”, says Roxana Marcoci, who has also compiled a plethora of interviews, including this one, and texts about the photographer in the rich book Wolfgang Tillmans: A Reader. “Together, they address the critical power of the gaze, when the eye becomes a tool of subversion. » Wolfgang Tillmans: To look without fear is therefore an experience that can be explored and lived with relish.
The versatility of his thought
His deep interest in video, moving images, magazines, astronomy, music, social justice, etc., which he uses for his multiple works, make Wolfgang Tillmans a “polymath”, believes Roxana Marcoci . “He pioneered a new form of presentation in which photographs are activated in space. His own cartography of the world and his social commitment thus make the work of the artist very singular. “His exhibitions are a proposal for observing our environment, and his installations reflect his vision and his perception of what surrounds him,” she adds.
“A pioneer since his debut, a first exhibition in Cologne in 1993, Wolfgang Tillmans continues to define new conventions that go against the traditional hierarchy of photography,” concludes the curator at MoMA. For her, the photographer establishes a kind of “visual democracy” based on equality and the perpetual recontextualization of her work, which she wishes she had succeeded in transposing for the best in Wolfgang Tillmans: To look without fear.