Eyes of Our Time. Wolfgang Tillmans compiles 30 years of his work to draw a picture of where we are today

Wolfgang Tillmans has explored the medium of photo-imaging with greater range than any other artist of his generation. From early portraits of his friends to abstract images made in a darkroom without a camera or works made with a photocopier, he has pushed the photographic process to its outer limits in myriad ways. For this collection of photos, his fifth book with TASCHEN, Tillmans edited his previous four books into one stream of intersecting perspectives on life around the turn of the millenium. Keeping his original layouts intact, he added some new works, bringing the scope of the publication to the present day.

Like hardly any other artist of his generation, Wolfgang Tillmans has shaped our perception of the world. From early portraits of his friends to still lifes, travel shots, nudes, landscape and sky photographs, to his abstract work, Tillmans has created a multitude of iconic works in his unmistakable visual language, opening up new paths and possibilities for both photography and contemporary art. In 2000 he was the first photographer and the first non-British person to receive the renowned Turner Prize.

His first volume for TASCHEN (1995) shows the young generation of the 1990s, of which Tillmans himself was a member, in clubs, at Gay Pride, at fashion events, and in everyday life. His dense, realistic photographs conjure up tangible utopias of community and society and are important documents of their time as well. With the follow-up volume Burg (1998), Tillmans enriches his subject matter with another array of beautiful, now-iconic photographs. In truth study center (2005), his images condense into even more subtle compositions and now stand alongside completely abstract works. Finally, Neue Welt (2012) documents Wolfgang Tillmans’ travels around the globe: from London to Tierra del Fuego, India, Papua New Guinea, Saudi Arabia, and Central Africa, we follow his ever-inquisitive eye for the realities of our planet, for social situations with people and markets, technology and architecture, and last but not least, nature and astronomy. For this volume, the artist for the first time made use of the new possibilities of digital photography. This enabled a density of information and incisiveness hardly seen in photographs until then.

This 40th-anniversary publication from TASCHEN combines the best of the four books in one volume. Wolfgang Tillmans himself has compiled this edition, partly redesigned it, added some recent works, and written a new foreword.

Paging through this collection of images, which spans three decades, there are countless moments to delight in, moments that are held not only in our collective memory but in our individual ones too.

The photographer:

Wolfgang Tillmans was born in Remscheid, Germany, in 1968 and studied at Bournemouth & Poole College of Art and Design. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential artists of his generation. His work, whilst appearing to capture the immediacy of the moment and character of the subject, also examines the dynamics of photographic representation. From the outset he ignored the traditional separation of art exhibited in a gallery from images and ideas conveyed through other forms of publication, giving equal weight to both. His expansive floor to ceiling installations feature images of subcultures and political movements, as well as portraits, landscapes, still lifes and abstract imagery varying in scale from postcard- to wall-sized prints. His work is in the collections of numerous international museums including The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Centre Pompidou, Paris, the National Museum of Modern Art, Osaka, Nationalgalerie, Berlin, and Tate, London, and was included in the Venice Biennale 2009. He was awarded the Turner Prize in 2000, the Hasselblad Award in 2014 and the Kaiserring der Stadt Goslar in 2018.

About the series:

TASCHEN is 40! Since we started our work as cultural archaeologists in 1980, TASCHEN has become synonymous with accessible publishing, helping bookworms around the world curate their own library of art, anthropology, and aphrodisia at an unbeatable price. Today we celebrate 40 years of incredible books by staying true to our company credo. The 40 series presents new editions of some of the stars of our program — now more compact, friendly in price, and still realized with the same commitment to impeccable production.

architecture under the microscope. rem koolhaas’s essential toolkit to building anatomies

This collection is a look through the microscope at the real fundamentals of our buildings, revealing the essential design techniques used by any architect, anywhere, anytime. Conceived by Rem Koolhaas and made with the Harvard Graduate School of Design, it is a primordial toolkit to understanding how seemingly stable elements are actually in constant evolution.

Elements of Architecture focuses on the fragments of the rich and complex architectural collage. Window, façade, balcony, corridor, fireplace, stair, escalator, elevator: the book seeks to excavate the micro-narratives of building detail. The result is no single history, but rather the web of origins, contaminations, similarities, and differences in architectural evolution, including the influence of technological advances, climatic adaptation, political calculation, economic contexts, regulatory requirements, and new digital opportunities. It’s a guide that is long overdue — in Koolhaas’s own words, “Never was a book more relevant — at a moment where architecture as we know it is changing beyond recognition.”

Derived, updated, and expanded from Koolhaas’s exhaustive and much-lauded exhibition at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale, this is an essential toolkit to understanding the fundamentals that comprise structure around the globe. Designed by Irma Boom and based on research from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, the 2,600-page monograph contains essays from Rem Koolhaas, Stephan Trueby, Manfredo di Robilant, and Jeffrey Inaba; interviews with Werner Sobek and Tony Fadell (of Nest); and an exclusive photo essay by Wolfgang Tillmans.

In addition to comprehensively updated texts and new images, this edition is designed and produced to visually (and physically) embody the immense scope of its subject matter:

Custom split-spine binding: our printer modified their industrial binding machine to allow for the flexible, eight-centimetre thick spine
Contains a new introductory chapter with forewords, a table of contents, and an index, located in the middle of the book (where it naturally opens due to its unique spine)

Printed on 50g Opakal paper, allowing for the ideal level of opacity needed to realize Boom’s palimpsest-like design
Translucent overlays and personal annotations by Koolhaas and Boom are woven in each chapter to create an alternative, faster route through the book
Printed at the originally intended 100% size for full readability

The author:

Rem Koolhaas is a co-founder of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture. Having worked as a journalist and scriptwriter before becoming an architect, in 1978 he published Delirious New York. His 1996 book S,M,L,XL summarized the work of OMA and established connections of contemporary society and architecture. He was listed among TIME magazine’s 100 most influential people in 2008, and among many international awards and exhibitions, he received the Pritzker Prize (2000) and the Premium Imperiale (2003). He directed the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale, coinciding with the first publication of Elements of Architecture.

The designer:

Irma Boom is a graphic designer specialized in making books. Since founding Irma Boom Office in 1990, she has worked with the likes of Chanel, the United Nations, OMA/Rem Koolhaas, Fondazione Prada, Pirelli, and Rijksmuseum Amsterdam. She received the Gutenberg Prize and the Johannes Vermeer Prize, the Dutch state prize for the arts, among others. Her work is in a permanent collection of the Design and Architecture Department of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Since 1992, Boom is a Senior Critic at Yale University in the USA.

The artist:

Wolfgang Tillmans was born in Remscheid, Germany, in 1968 and studied at Bournemouth & Poole College of Art and Design. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential artists of his generation. His work, whilst appearing to capture the immediacy of the moment and character of the subject, also examines the dynamics of photographic representation. From the outset, he ignored the traditional separation of art exhibited in a gallery from images and ideas conveyed through other forms of publication, giving equal weight to both. His expansive floor-to-ceiling installations feature images of subcultures and political movements, as well as portraits, landscapes, still-lives and abstract imagery varying in scale from postcard- to wall-sized prints. His work has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1996 and Tate Britain, London, in a major retrospective in 2003. He was awarded the Turner Prize in 2000.

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Посмотреть видео о книге Rem Koolhaas. Elements of Architecture

In his third TASCHEN book, celebrated artist photographer and winner of the 2000 Turner Prize Wolfgang Tillmans takes his exploration of the visible world to a new level. The title truth study center is a tongue-in-cheek reference to the paradox of our desire to find a universal truth and the impossibility of doing so. From evocative nude studies and candid personal portraits of Tony Blair to astronomical views of planet Venus passing over the disc of the sun, for the first time the full width of Tillmans's world is brought together in one book. Also included is an extensive selection of striking new abstract works, which through their vivid colors and compositions evoke bodily as well as atmospheric sensations. From nightlife to still life, Tillmans shows us another side of the world we live in today.