Wolfgang Tillmans — Nothing Could Have Prepared Us – Everything Could Have Prepared Us

The catalogue of Wolfgang Tillmans's carte blanche at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, on view from 13 June to 22 September 2025.

It was the final project in the building before it closed. Tillmans took over the whole of Level 2 of the Bibliothèque publique d'information, around 6,000 square metres, and conceived the show as one work, making new pieces for the space. More than thirty-five years of photographs, from portraiture and still life to architecture, documentary and abstraction, were hung in conversation with the library, considered both as a building and as a place where knowledge is handed on.

Across the book's spreads, reproductions of the works alternate with installation views showing how Tillmans remade the space. Essays by younger writers approach his practice from new directions; contributors include Julie Jones, Peter Szendy, Taous Dahmani and Boaz Levin. Florian Ebner, who leads the Centre Pompidou's photography department, edited the book with the assistant curator Olga Frydryszak-Rétat. Design by deValence with Lyosha Kritsouk.

Spector Books, 2025. 272 pages, thread-sewn softcover, 22 x 28 cm, with more than 600 colour illustrations. In English.