International collection

Even before starting to take photographs, Tillmans entered the orbit of images by manipulating materials taken from magazines and newspapers with a copy machine. The images published in the 1980s describe youth sub-cultures and their specific contexts, from Gay Pride to nightclubs and techno music. Presenting street photography, portraits, still lifes and landscapes his entire oeuvre takes on the form of a continuously evolving flow that renews itself thanks to the open, never-static nature of the images. The photographs in collection are emblematic of Tillmans’ experimental variety: he probed the materiality of photography, its chemical processes and its formal aspects, also making use of off-camera practices. Conquistador III belongs to the special editions produced starting from single images that were then re-photographed – the upshot of incidents or errors caused by light or by chemicals during the printing process. Lux, instead, stands as the return to representation after a decade of abstract experiments.