Wolfgang Tillmans

Conceived and designed by German photographer Wolfgang Tillmans (born 1968), this richly illustrated artist’s book explores the latest developments in Tillmans’ work over the last three years. Today Is The First Day conveys his richly diverse approach to image-making, video, performance, music and political activities, and also features newly commissioned texts from contributors—including novelist and author of The Lonely City Olivia Laing, historian and essayist Brian Dillon, curator Catherine Wood and geologist Dr David Chew—each of whom illuminate a different aspect of Tillmans’s work.

The book includes over 30 pages featuring his set design for the English National Opera’s production of War Requiem

Wolfgang Tillmans is one of the most influential artists of his generation, is known for pushing the limits of photography and image-making. His ambition as an artist is nothing less than to capture the world we live in. Weaving its way across the wealth of media and the variety of his subjects, the notion at the core of Tillmans’s work is that of visibility. When does something become perceptible? What is the relationship between what we perceive and what we know? What impact do new technologies have on how we see the world? These questions reveal the political reach of Tillmans’s work. Since his first images, which bore witness to the new social and cultural paradigms brought into being by a generation marked by the AIDS crisis and the fall of the Berlin Wall, Tillmans has always shown a strong political consciousness. For several years now, his political commitment has ventured beyond the practice of art and into social activism and the defense of democracy and minority rights via his foundation, Between Bridges, and a number of pro-EU campaigns that he initiated.