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Washington University in St. Louis
Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts

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Wolfgang Tillmans

Silver 71

2008

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Widely celebrated as a chronicler of his generation, Wolfgang Tillmans became known in the early 1990s for his photographs of the gay community and club scenes in London and Berlin. Over the years Tillmans’s visual archive has expanded to include a variety of themes as well as more abstract works that explore the medium of photography itself. Silver 71 exemplifies this abstract turn. A large-scale vertical image in different shades of pink, it is part of a series of photographs, begun in the late 1990s, that the artist made without the use of a camera. To create it, Tillmans ran photosensitive paper through a processing machine, where the paper picked up dirt and silver residue, and then exposed it to light, the specks leaving an imprint of their presence on the surface. While the abstract image seems more painterly than photographic, it is nonetheless still a photograph, and in that sense it still serves as an index, if not of “reality” in any common sense, of the material conditions of the medium itself. [Permanent collection label, 2016]

  • Artist Wolfgang Tillmans (German, b. 1968)
  • Title Silver 71
  • Date 2008
  • Medium Chromogenic color print
  • Edition description 1/1 + 1 AP
  • Dimensions image | 89 5/8 x 67 1/4 in.
  • Credit line University purchase, Parsons Fund, 2010
  • Object number WU 2010.0001.0001

Contemporary German Art: Selections from the Permanent Collection
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 05/03/2013 - 09/07/2013

Precarious Worlds: Contemporary Art from Germany
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 09/09/2011 - 01/09/2012

Focus on Photography: Recent Acquisitions
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 05/07/2010 - 07/26/2010

Focus on Photography: Recent Acquisitions 2010

Precarious Worlds: Contemporary Art from Germany 2011

4/30/2010
neugerriemschneider, Berlin

This artwork record may be incomplete or need refinement. Our staff actively researches the collection and revises records when new information is available. If you have questions or comments about this record, please contact us.

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