Wolfgang Tillmans as well as Bernd and Hilla Becher in exhibitions in New York

EA close-up of a vulva, the vastness of the starry sky seen from an airplane window, a mobile phone leaning against a water bottle: everything can become the object of Wolfgang Tillmans’ curiosity. The exhibition, which the New York Museum of Modern Art is devoting to the artist, who was born in Remscheid in 1968, shows the entire range of his work – and this includes not only photographs, but also videos, music and the installation “Truth Study Center”. The exhibition occupies the entire sixth floor of MoMA. 350 works were announced, 417 are said to have finally become – Tillmans has never been shown more extensively in New York. “To Look Without Fear” – without fear of looking or looking – should also be an invitation to look again and again undisguised, says the artist in an interview.

His show is not the only major exhibition of German photographers currently running in New York. The Metropolitan Museum is presenting the posthumous retrospective of the works of Bernd and Hilla Becher. The series of industrial monuments that have entered the canon of modern photography and were created over a period of more than forty years hang in strictly arranged groups that only reveal their diversity and vitality at second glance. Pictures of the Concordia coal mine in Oberhausen occupy a gallery, and a collection of water towers from five different countries spans almost two decades. The exhibition in honor of the founders of the Düsseldorf School of Photography, who died in 2007 and 2015, includes more than 400 works.

Where the Bechers developed a recognizable formal pictorial language, Tillmans knows no restrictions for his photographs either in terms of content or form. Anything can become a motif for him, and not only is his approach to the world very open – his attitude is also reflected in the way the works are hung. Some of the photos are attached to the walls with adhesive strips, some are hanging on doors, around the emergency exit sign. Since 2005, he has continued to develop the “Truth Study Center”, the installation on tables under glass. Now the collage-like newspaper articles, pamphlets and scientific writings that deal with the search for truth also contain references to Vladimir Putin and the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine. In recent years, Tillmans says, his art has become even more political because democratic values ​​are threatened more acutely than before.

The American critics reacted to both exhibitions mostly with enthusiasm. For the “New York Times”, for example, the photographs of the Bechers show “delicious obsessions”. The industrial monuments are raised from their banality to something special that at the same time gives them a lightness in contrast to their function. A “fascinating, frankly beautiful” show is to be seen in which the photos “soothe the soul,” Blake Gopnik enthuses in the “Times”. The Wall Street Journal is passionate about the discipline of photography, which art critic Joseph Masheck once described as “puritanical romanticism.” Regional media such as “Brooklyn Rail” also recommend the exhibition – art critic and photographer James Welling recalls meeting Hilla Becher in 1973, who asked him to take her to Californian oil refineries, but ended up not photographing them. Welling, who teaches at Princeton University, also emphasizes the Bechers’ influence on American photographers.

Delicious obsessions feature all three

In the interview, Tillmans also emphasized the great influence of the two compatriots, whose show also aroused enthusiasm among many American critics. He also mentions that an exhibition in New York is very special because the audience here is devoted but also particularly critical – New Yorkers go to exhibitions very purposefully and the wide range makes them picky visitors. The same probably applies to cultural journalists. The “New York Times” attests Tillmans to have become “older, wiser, cooler” – at least that’s how critic Matthew Anderson sees it.

Jason Farago contradicts him in The Times. He finds parts of the show to be “moralistic”, which often means politically. The Truth Study Center appears preachy to Farago. Tillmans also adapted digital photography “only with moderate success”. Color-saturated large formats of a street in Shanghai or a slum in Argentina are too perfect and “artificially distanced”. In the age of the online flood of images, party photos taken with a digital camera are simply “redundant” and some are “really terrible,” says Farago.

For Tillmans himself, the digitally created works are a logical, contemporary-oriented continuation of his art, which has always been at home in more than one medium. Meanwhile, Farago’s criticism is being slammed: Everyone is getting older, he taunts, but Tillmans’ art has congealed into “self-righteousness”. An accusation that Farago does not give precise reasons for, and which is regularly leveled at political art of all genres.

Wolfgang Tillmans – To Look Without Fear. At the Museum of Modern Art, New York; until January 1st. The catalog costs 49 euros in German bookstores.

Bernd & Hilla Becher. At the Metropolitan Museum of Art; until November 6th. Then from December 17th to April 2nd in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The catalog was published by Verlag Schirmer/Mosel and costs 58 euros in Germany.