Wolfgang Tillmans' Still Islands

Abstract

This article analyses a set of photographic works on island and littoral locations by German photographer Wolfgang Tillmans. Focusing initially on one of Tillmans' signature images, Untitled (La Gomera), 1997, the article draws attention to this piece's originating context in the island of La Gomera in the Canary Islands. The critical narrative expands to include other island and littoral photographs to sketch a series of ‘frames’, from notions of process, scene, borders and the elemental, to escape and mobilities. The text locates its readings in dialogue with Tillmans' most recent project, Neue Welt, as a way to think about contemporary ways of producing and altering island images that depart from longstanding island imaginaries of the tropical Atlantic and other, similar oceanic locations. The article concludes by arguing that an ‘aesthetics off the margin’ can be teased out of Tillmans' photographic shores and islandscapes.