Lighter

Over the past few years, abstraction has gained considerable importance in the multifaceted oeuvre of Turner Prize–recipient Wolfgang Tillmans. Following Blushes, the monumental Freischwimmer series, and the monochromatic Silver series, his most recent abstract works—of which the creased and folded Lighter series (starting in 2005) is the most significant—treat the photograph no longer as a reproductive medium, but as a material object. Tillmans’s paper drop photographs feature the actual prints in almost geometrical compositions that become practically tangible. Constantly oscillating between photograph and object, these most recent works are assembled by Wolfgang Tillmans for the first time in this new book.

Unprecedented in this publication is an extensive section of installation views, taken by Tillmans himself, thus enabling the reader to directly experience his visual cosmos as it was presented in recent exhibitions, including his last retrospective, seen at various venues in the United States.

A C-print of one of Wolfgang Tillmans’s abstract photographs graces the front cover of a hardbound edition of the catalogue. In addition, an undeveloped sheet of photographic paper is also bound into the book. The tones of the sheet will alter, depending upon the degree to which the volume is “used”—and hence, the amount of light it is exposed to.