Wolfgang Tillmans: Nothing Could Have Prepared Us - Everything Could Have Prepared Us

A new project at the Centre Pompidou traces 35 years of Wolfgang Tillmans' work

Published with Centre Pompidou.

This catalog traces German photographer Wolfgang Tillmans' unique 2025 project at the Centre Pompidou, for which he was given a generous carte blanche. The result occupied the entire second floor of the Public Information Library, where Tillmans' experimental installation transformed the space, establishing a dialogue with the former library and questioning it both as architecture and as a locus for the transmission of knowledge. The work explores over 35 years of artistic practice through various photographic genres and constitutes another very personal representation of his universe, whose order and logic are activated in response to the library space. With 600 images, an index of the works alternates with numerous installation shots that show how the artist made this space his own, while a varied selection of essays by a younger generation of authors sheds new light on the various aspects of Tillmans' work.
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 and the Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography. His foundation, Between Bridges, supports the advancement of democracy, international understanding, the arts and LGBTQ+ rights.