Wolfgang Tillmans

Over the past few decades, Tillman has developed and experimented with abstraction creating wire-thin cascading marks and an array of colors created from the chemical process in the darkroom. His main focus on these series centers on the idea of the actual photographic process, "beginning with photography and ending with photography", all of which were created in the darkroom.

 

The photographs in these series have a magical aura, one that reminds the viewer of an alchemy-like scene involving the substances, the chemicals, and the work required to develop an image. Tom Holter, in his extract from The Unforeseen. On the Production of the New, and Other Movements in the Work of Wolfgang Tillmans, he comments that these images "call to mind microscopically detailed images of biolog­ical processes, hirsute epidermises, highly erogenous zones, and that their aura fills the whole space."

 

There's a clear connection between painting and photography in these pictures - a painterly abstract effect - created without the use of a camera; the photographic paper merely captures and records the movement of light Tillman directs at it.

 

The mystical appeal of these photographs, with the vibrating strands of color, remind me (personally) of the movement of exotically beautiful sirens and mermaids underwater. Despite their calm appeal and aura, these photographs demand attention in their great scale.

 

*Freischwimmer.- refers to German levels of swimming