Wolfgang Tillmans: To look without fear

Encompassing photography, installation, print media, video and more, this publication is the most comprehensive account of Tillmans' wide-ranging career to date A visionary creator and intrepid polymath, Wolfgang Tillmans unites formal inventiveness with an ethical orientation that attends to the most pressing issues of life today. While his work transcends the bounds of any single artistic discipline, he is best known for his wide-ranging photographic output. From trenchant documents of social movements to windowsill still lifes, ecstatic images of nightlife to cameraless abstractions, sensitive portraits to architectural studies, astronomical phenomena to intimate nudes, he has explored seemingly every genre of photography imaginable, continually experimenting with how to make new pictures and deepen the viewer's experience. Published in conjunction with a major exhibition of Tillmans' work at the Museum of Modern Art, this copiously illustrated volume surveys four decades of the artist's career. An outstanding group of writers offer diverse essays addressing key threads of his multifaceted practice, and a new text by Tillmans himself elucidates the distinctive methodology behind his system of presenting photographs. Wolfgang Tillmans: To look without fear grants readers new insight into the work of an artist who has not only changed the way photography is exhibited but pointed contemporary art in dynamic new directions. Wolfgang Tillmans (born 1968) is among the most influential contemporary artists, and the impact of his work registers across the arts, intersecting with fashion, music, architecture, the performing arts and activism. Tillmans is the recipient of the Turner Prize (2000) and the Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography (2015). His foundation, Between Bridges, supports the advancement of democracy, international understanding, the arts and LGBTQ rights.

Roxana Marcoci is Senior Curator in the Department of Photography at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Clément Chéroux, Chief Curator of Photography, MoMA, and former Senior Curator of Photography, SFMOMA Sophie Hackett, Curator of Photography, AGO Keller Easterling, Professor and Director of the Master of Environmental Design Program, Yale University. Quentin Bajac, Director, Jeu de Paume Yve-Alain Bois, Institute for Advanced Study Julia Bryan-Wilson, Doris and Clarence Malo Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art, University of California, Berkeley Durga Chew-Bose, Essayist and Critic, Author of Too Much and Not the Mood, editor at SSENSE Stuart Comer, Chief Curator of Media & Performance, MoMA Oluremi Onabanjo, Independent Curator and Scholar Paul Flynn, Writer, Author of Good as You Michelle Kuo, The Marlene Hess Curator of Painting and Sculpture, MoMA Phil Taylor, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Photography, MoMA. Andrew Vielkind, former Mellon-Marron Research Consortium Fellow

Lead essays - 5000 words each: 1. Roxana Marcoci, Senior Curator, Department of Photography, MoMA. Marcoci's essay will address the multitude of creative platforms and formats across which Tillmans's images have proliferated, considering dissemination and distribution as a medium. 2. Clement Cheroux, Senior Curator of Photography, SFMOMA. Cheroux will provide close analysis of the dialectics of photography and sculpture in Tilmans's work. 3. Beatriz Colomina, Princeton University; or Kitty Scott, Carol and Morton Rapp Curator, Modern and Contemporary Art, Art Gallery of Ontario; or Florian Ebner, Chief Curator of Photography, Centre Pompidou. This essay will consider Tillmans's trenchant investigation of spatial politics and the global built environment. 4. David Joselit, Graduate Center, CUNY, will consider the links between the artist's use of unframed prints and unpretentious media. Chronology - 4000 words: This series of short essays by Phil Taylor will incorporate new insights into the artist's biography, and will theorize the relationship between Tillmans's work and the social, political and historical context in which it was produced. Shorter Thematic studies - 3000 words each: 1. Photography as Model, by Yve-Alain Bois 2. Portraiture, by Hilton Als 3. Still Life, by Maggie Nelson 4. Darkroom Experimentation, by Quentin Bajac 5. Video and Sound Art, by Stuart Comer 6. From a Painter's Eyes, by Jutta Koether 7. Print Media, by Paul Flynn 8. The Politics of the Body, by Paul B. Preciado or Richard Meyer 9. Re-Mix: Music and Electronic Media, by Seth Price 10. Art and Technology, by Michelle Kuo 11. Spirituality, by Phil Taylor 12. Exhibition as Activism, by Matthew Higgs