Wolfgang Tillmans has been honoured with the Henri Cartier-Bresson Lifetime Achievement Award. The prize is awarded by the Fondation and recognises a photographer or an artist working with photography whose contribution to the medium has been outstanding. It was introduced in 2024 and is presented every year. Its aim is to single out creators who have changed the history of the form. The recipient of the award is given an allocation of 35,000 euros, to be used for both an exhibition at the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson and a publication.
The tribute at the ceremony was personal. The artist and musician Michael Stipe spoke warmly about his friendship with Tillmans and about their work together. He also spoke about the influence Tillmans has had on the international scene. It was less a formal citation than a portrait of a long relationship.
Tillmans’s career has taken him across the map. His work has been shown in London, New York, Paris, Basel, Lagos and Tokyo, in many of the leading institutions. Tate Modern gave him a major retrospective in 2017. In 2022 the Museum of Modern Art in New York followed with To Look Without Fear, a large exhibition that traced three decades of his practice.
In 2025, the Centre Pompidou invited him to take over the Bibliothèque publique d’information. The result was “Rien ne nous y préparait, tout nous y préparait,” spread across 6,000 square metres. Tillmans did not simply hang pictures on the walls. He rethought the furniture and the site’s architecture, and set up a conversation among his images, the space, and its memory.
That freedom is a hallmark. His installations break from conventional framing and treat the room as part of the work. Photographs, walls, and the history of a place all speak to one another. The approach has made him a restless reinventor of the image.
Through his installations, explorations, and constant remaking of what a photograph can be, Tillmans has made a major contribution to contemporary art.