The Easel

6th September 2022

Wolfgang Tillmans’ ways of seeing

Tillmans seems to acquire accolades with ease, a Turner Prize in 2000 being just the first of many. They are indicators of the distinctiveness of his photography, which is about being alert to the present. His work isn’t diaristic, he says. Rather, he strives to “spotlight something that everyone pretends not to see”. That something might be specific (youthful eroticism, AIDS) or just a “sense of the here and now”. Either way, his work is “a flash news report from and for a new generation”.

30th August 2022

Keep Looking

Shabazz claims that humility is essential for his work. His decades-long subject is the people he encounters on New York’s streets, people who are the “center of the photograph but not of the world in which the picture is taken”. Politics gets scant attention. Mostly, we see past fashions, old makes of cars, or passing acts of tenderness, evidence of people “acting out the story of being themselves”.  Collectively, Shabazz has produced an “archive” of New York’s street culture. Images are here.