Wolfgang Tillmans: ‘I never took freedom of expression for granted’

This article is taken from the autumn 2025 issue of Dazed. Buy a copy of the magazine here.

In an overwhelmingly digitised world, Wolfgang Tillmans remains as in love with print as ever. For more than three decades, the artist has used books, zines, prints, photocopies, magazines and posters as both the medium and the message – not just for their tactility, but as a way to disseminate his politically charged artworks to the widest audience, and as a democratising force that challenges the exclusivity of the art world.

In Tillmans’ hands, photographing acts of resistance – whether that’s anti-war demonstrations or the queer club culture he has documented since the 1990s – is a form of protest in itself. So it was apt that the artist’s 2025 blockbuster retrospective, Nothing could have prepared us – Everything could have prepared us, was held not in the traditional galleries of the Centre Pompidou in Paris, but in its public library, the Bibliothèque Publique d’Information. His ingenious use of the cavernous space to showcase work from his photographic practice, moving images, music and sound became a work of art in itself. “I wasn’t given a gallery with walls, I was given an empty library,” says Tillmans of the exhibition, staged over the summer in partnership with Celine. “It was a two-year design project to develop a spatial concept that then became home to the artworks, so the whole installation itself is the work.”

From his visceral portraits of techno clubs to his anti-Brexit poster campaign, the artist’s work is driven by a demand that we engage, not just with the image in the gallery space, but with the political and social realities outside its walls. Known for curating his exhibitions with unframed photographs hung from the walls, Tillmans urges us to contemplate and re-evaluate the currency of what we’re being presented with. His ongoing Truth Study Centre project collects newspaper cuttings, objects and photographs, interrogating media bias and the veracity of the information we are inundated with. Through projects like these, he continually challenges us not to lapse into passivity.

Alongside an exclusive portfolio of images selected by the artist from his own archive, Tillmans talks about the alarming political swing to the right we’ve seen in recent years, why it’s vital to step away from our screens and into our communities, and how documenting subcultures has helped preserve their presence in the face of rising censorship and erasure.

“I’ve been dealing with censorship throughout my career. It’s not a new phenomenon. I had a strong sense of it at the time of the acid house and rave revolution in the early 90s, when gay rights and queer liberation became more mainstream. In that time, we saw – in the US, especially – a virulent opposition to this progress. I’ve always been aware of just how much hatred there is for this kind of progress, in religion and on the right, so I cherished the freedom that was beginning to feel possible.

“What we have experienced over the past ten years is the retaliation of a reactionary conservative force. The fight for equality, democratic transparency and non-discrimination had a certain logic of breaking down barriers and censorship, but since the 2010s these same progressive strategies have been adopted by the far right. Theories that seemed fringe eight years ago are now coming straight from the social media accounts of the president of the United States. Now, the simple fact-checking of conspiracy theories is called censorship.

Now, the simple fact-checking of conspiracy theories is called censorship – Wolfgang Tillmans

“But we can’t just point at America and say how terrible it is. It’s important to take courage and defend [ourselves against] what’s happening in Europe, too: in our own regions, countries and cities. Not all is lost. It sounds obvious, but it’s so important to vote. Every single vote matters – even if it’s inconvenient to register or to get up to do it. Voting is the foundation of democracy – without it there’s no freedom. I find it absolutely shocking when young people don’t vote.

“Being an active and aware citizen doesn’t just mean having an Instagram account and going to one big demonstration – it’s important to understand that politics happens in real life, in political groups that gather in local town meetings. That’s where decisions are made. A social media post counts for nothing until it is converted into a vote or an impactful real-life discussion. Taking care of your local political landscape matters: we need to see our town as the world we’re in, rather than being in an online community that holds for nothing, that cannot protect you.

“I partied in Shanghai in 2009, and I went back in 2018 to find that only one club remained. Almost all of the gay clubs there have disappeared now. In 2014, in Saint Petersburg, I took a photograph inside the last lesbian and gay club, the Blue Oyster Bar. It’s become so expensive to go out – it’s almost a privilege to go to the pub now, it’s not affordable for everybody. It all comes down to ‘use it or lose it’. ‘Using it’ always means physical action; online actions don’t count for anything. If a public space isn’t being used physically, it will not be preserved. Clubs are dying because people are not using them. Maybe people will say, ‘Well, I actually don’t want to get drunk, I don’t want to be part of that.’ Well, then there needs to be a new way of meeting people in real life.

“That’s why I find libraries so beautiful. So many people have fallen in love at the Pompidou library. It may sound dusty and out of touch, but they are places where you can read a paper for free and listen to music without subscribing to a streaming service. See what your council offers, besides the pool and the gym. Visit the library and look at different ways of meeting people, because if everybody only meets and entertains themselves online, there’ll be nowhere left to meet in real life.

I’ve always felt that I record things out of a sense of responsibility, to prove that we existed and so it couldn’t be undone – Wolfgang Tillmans

“I wanted my exhibition to take its setting into account – the sociopolitical history of the Pompidou and the spirit from which it was born, which is so important in a time when library and arts budgets are being cut. As a public library, this space has the particular ethic of making knowledge accessible to everybody. So it was clear to me that the exhibition could not only be devoted to my practice, but that I devoted my practice to the library, the architecture and the idea of sharing and preserving knowledge.

“While I always celebrated partying, music and free expression, my love of books and magazines partly came from a sense of needing to record it – to record these freedoms I have always cherished so much, to contribute to saving them from being forgotten. Many people in the early 90s thought that techno and the [iconic Berlin street party] Love Parade were superficial, hedonistic and apolitical, but I felt those times were historically unprecedented. I never took freedom of expression for granted, because those things could not have happened in 1950 or 1880, and could not happen now in many countries. They would be censored.

“I’ve always felt that I record things out of a sense of responsibility, to prove that we existed and so it couldn’t be undone. So that histories won’t be erased and that future generations can look back at them and use them to their benefit.”