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Wolfgang Tillmans exhibits a wealth of photographs that stimulate the viewer to want to see more, to know more, to connect the photographs in some form of narrative. People are the primary subject matter but there is something about the way the subjects interact with the photographer that implies relationship, intimate knowledge, trust, transparency, and shared experience. Does he really know all these people or does Tillmans have the gift of connection, that seems to permeate his photography.

He is very prolific and the abundance of images begin to suggest a narrative, but the narrative seems to be the life experiences of the photographer and not some underlying narrative armature. Looking at the profusion of color photographs in Berg, I feel that I wish I knew Tillmans, and in some ways wish I was Tillmans, for the photographs are a grand adventure in life.

The photographs are not organized chronologically or thematically in this book, which allows for the process of free association to set in, and inevitably the viewer tries to tie is all together, to link the images. But life is ephemeral and is fleeting and this quality of human existence is captured in the compelling warmth and attraction of the photographs. They are beautiful photographs, color drenched, filled with accidents of composition, of seeing the world as it is and yet focused. His multiple still life images are a good example. They appear to be spontaneous still life, discovered, or quickly assembled, and always a combination of the formal and informal, the calculated and the accidental, the traditional and the unexpected. Cigarette butts and colored rubber bands lie beside tomatoes and cherries. They appear to be visual impressions of the world encountered rather than the world manipulated. They appear to be discovered rather than constructed. They are beautiful and fresh and delightful.

Photographing friends must be a tricky business unless the completely move beyond self judgment and become transparent and expressive before the lens. Tillmans captures this moment, the personal clown, the intimate joker, showing off for the photographer and et also for posterity. I felt the photographs were like a photographic journal, a chronicle of Tillmans life and relationships, and yet he is a perfectionist, a colorist, and a formalist as his broad range of subjects emerges.

Two clues emerged for me as I looked at the wealth of photographs. First, he photographs celebrities with the same style and nuance as he photographs his personal friends. They become ordinary and special at the same time. They lose the glamour of celebrity and become wry players in the vast narrative that Tillmans weaves. Second, it gradually becomes obvious that Tillmans is a gay man and his photographs reflect the world as filtered through the eyes of a gay man.

The young subjects are resistant to definition, to stereotype, and they display this creative resistance in photograph after photograph. He captures the spirit of youthful rebellion in a lived, realistic, effortless, communal manner. We exist in relationship and this ever changing ever growing construction of the self is captured in the cascade of images. We also exist in time, another aspect of the photograph captured in these works. We exist in relationship in time and this fleeting miracle is hard to capture with integrity, but in this respect Tillmans succeeds.