Wolfgang Tillmans returns to Paris with a new photography exhibition at Galerie Chantal Crousel

A new photography exhibition by Wolfgang Tillmans is to be hosted by Galerie Chantal Crousel in Paris this autumn. The exhibition will run from September 5th to October 10th, 2026. Following his major presentation at the Centre Pompidou last year, the German artist will be showcasing a new selection of works that build upon his decades-long exploration of photography, perception, and the relationship between the personal and the universal.

A master of the fleeting image, Tillmans has continually expanded the vocabulary of photography. His work moves fluidly between personal experience, abstraction, and social observation, covering subjects ranging from Berlin’s rave culture and portraits of a generation to oceans, skies, and everyday objects.

Wolfgang Tillmans’ work turns photography into an open language of seeing

The exhibition continues a visual language that has made Wolfgang Tillmans’ work instantly recognisable while resisting a fixed signature. Throughout his career, he has questioned what makes a photograph and how images acquire meaning. Portraits, still lifes, landscapes, abstractions and documentary images coexist, creating unexpected visual connections.

His photographs can be intimate and playful, yet carry a pointed social edge. By collapsing distinctions between genres, subjects and techniques, Tillmans challenges photography’s traditional hierarchies. An image may be monumental or incidental, meticulously composed or shaped by chance; the essential act is looking.

This openness has defined his career. In 2000, Tillmans became the first photographer and first non-British artist to win the Turner Prize. He later received the Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography in 2015 and the Kaiserring prize in 2018.

The project followed Tillmans’ appointment as a visiting professor at the Beaux-Arts de Paris for 2025–2026, extending his role as both artist and teacher. His return to Galerie Chantal Crousel continues this dialogue with the city while revisiting a question that has long shaped his practice: what does it mean to make pictures in a world saturated with images?