Tag/Nacht III

Tag/Nacht III is part of Wolfgang Tillmans’ “vertical landscapes”, a series of photographs begun in 1995 exploring the variations in colour and light that unfold in the celestial atmosphere, in an attempt to capture the vastness of the cosmos. Taken through the window of an aeroplane, this photograph shows a sky bathed in twilight over the cloud-covered earth. Between the two, the horizon line seems to expand in the sky. It unfolds its midnight blue shadow, which is in fact that of the Earth, projected into its own sky. Tillmans seeks to attain a point of view that can be shared by the viewer: “the position that everybody can take, that chooses to sit at an airplane window or chooses to climb a tower. That perspective, on various levels, allows me to work at the same time in a figurative and an abstract manner, analyzing what one could call 'the surface of the social fabric' and getting forms and shapes from which to derive pictures.” From these common positions, his formal explorations are linked to concrete perceptual expe-riences, which the photographic act abstracts and elevates.

“I never underestimate the importance of the fleeting moment; potentially a 
good thing can happen at any time and only reveal its full relevance over the course of time.”