Wolfgang Tillmans. If one thing matters, Everything Matters

Wolfgang Tillmans is one of the most significant artists to have emerged in Europe in the 1990s. Working almost exclusively with the photographic image, the visual language and sensibility he has created and the strategies he has employed in the making and the dissemination of his work have had a profound influence on both photography-based art practice and commercial photography. Blurring the distictions between fine art photography, fashion shoot and retortage, his apparently spontaneous images of gay pride activists, clubbers and eco-warriors led him to being hailed as a chronicler of his generation, a tag he insistently rejected. While he continues to capture the fleeting moment he is also exploring more formal traditions, in portraiture, landscape and stille life compositions of rare sensibility. In further developments, he is working with video and manipulating photographic images in the dark room to produce abstract, painterly compositions that have been described as 'painting with light'. Published to coincide with a major exhibition at Tate Britain, this sumptuously illustrated book presents an artist constantly developing his vision to encompass new aspects of the world that surrounds us.