Wolfgang Tillmans has won the Henri-Cartier Bresson Lifetime Achievement Award. He will receive €35,000, to be used for an exhibition at the Fondation Henri-Cartier Bresson and for a publication. ‘This is a fantastic award named after a fantastic photographer’, Tillmans said upon receiving the award.
Following Sophie Calle and Susan Meiselas, Tillmans is the third recipient of the award, which recognises photographers who have shaped the medium. The photographer, based between Berlin and London, is best known for his 1990s raw snapshots of youth culture and the LGBTQIA+ community. His photography is ubiquitous, from his album cover for Frank Ocean’s Blonde to the use of his portrait The Cock (Kiss) for the UK paperback cover of Douglas Stuart’s Young Mungo.
Tillmans has been collecting awards since 2000, when he became the first photographer and non-British artist to win the Turner Prize. Since then, Tillmans’s practice has extended to encompass experimental camera-less photography alongside his widely-circulated intimate portraiture. Throughout his career, Tillmans has also used his platform to advocate for the advancement of democracy through a series of political campaigns, namely his Pro EU / Anti-Brexit Campaign (2016) and the establishment of the Between Bridges Foundation in 2017, which supports the arts, LGBTQIA+ rights and anti-racism work.
