Stephan Tillmans
Interview (2024)
I’d like to start by hearing a bit about your origin and background. What kind of family and environment shaped who you are?I grew up in a small town in northwestern Germany in a pretty typical middle-class patchwork environment. I have three half-siblings—two younger sisters and an older brother. One of my sisters lived with my dad, and the rest of us were with my mom and stepdad.
Can you tell me about your childhood? Are there any memories or experiences from back then that have influenced your creativity or way of seeing things today?I remember one of my first school reports mentioning that I wouldn’t follow the class and would constantly look out the window daydreaming. I guess I didn’t really fit into a traditional school system, and I even had to repeat 3rd and 7th grade. Being an introvert, I found that art was, for a long time, the only form through which I could express myself. I always enjoyed art classes, started playing guitar, and received my first analog camera from my dad at age 10 that I loved to take with me. So for as long as I [can] remember, I always preferred doing something creative. Though it took me a long time to find the medium I felt I could best express myself with.
Growing up, I was always surrounded by some form of artistic expression. Everyone in the family either played an instrument or had an artistic hobby and there was always music, paintings and photography around the house.
When I got my first computer in 1996, I started getting into graphic design, mainly through gaming. I created my own kits for FIFA and designed cars for Need for Speed, which I managed to mod into the game. But, I didn’t seriously get into photography until I bought my first digital camera in the early 2000s. I was too impatient for film development, so digital was a blessing for me. Soon I started modding my camera with DIY lenses, experimenting with photo editing, creating digital collages, glitch art, and later more graphic design-related projects. Looking back, I’m really thankful that my family valued the arts so much, which made it feel natural to spend hours creating things just for the sake of experimenting and expression.
What is your earliest memory of a work—whether it’s a photo, painting, design, or music—that left a strong impression on you or influenced you?The aesthetics and music of Sega Master System and Genesis games are something that I have very early memories of. I’ve spent lots of time playing video games with my brother growing up and sometimes I just put on a game just to listen to the music.
I heard you were studying business before moving on to Communication Design at the Technical Art School Berlin (today the University of Europe). Could you tell me about what led you to shift to a path in design, or share the journey that brought you here?When it came time to choose a subject to study, I struggled for a long time to decide. I knew I wanted to do something in the creative field but didn’t know what exactly. Nor did I have the confidence to apply to an art school, and some remarks from distant relatives and friends destroyed my belief that design or art could be a career.
So, I spent about half a year doing nothing until my parents, rightfully so, suggested I study something broad enough to allow for different career paths. I almost randomly chose international business. After just a week, I already knew I didn’t belong there. I stayed a little longer, absorbing everything that interested me, and then decided to quit. By then, I had more confidence in my artistic abilities and was frustrated enough with my choice to finally apply to art schools, though they all rejected me. So, I set out to build a better portfolio to apply for communication design.
I’d visited Berlin a few times and decided it was the perfect place for my next steps. I moved there in 2005 to live with a friend of my parents who worked at a theater. She got me a job in the props department, where I worked evenings so I could build my portfolio during the day. After weeks of preparing a portfolio with graphic design, photography, and sketches, I finally got accepted into Berliner Technische Kunsthochschule. They had just been founded in 2005, and I was very lucky that one of the professors saw something in me that qualified me to study there.
I understand that Luminant Point Arrays was your bachelor’s thesis project. What themes or ideas were you initially hoping to explore?So I wrote my bachelor’s thesis on concrete photography or non-objective photography. It’s a very theoretical concept that aligns with an interesting chapter in German photography from the 1960s. If abstract is on one end of a spectrum and realism is in the middle, concrete is on the other end. It deals with the question, whether a photographic image can be something else then depictive representation and the photographic means themselves become the subject of the photograph.
Talking about concrete photography usually puts people to sleep so I stopped talking about it in the context of my work. Also I always enjoyed how other people interpret in my work.
How did the idea of using tube televisions as a subject come about, along with the approach of capturing that moment of light as the image disappears? And what drew you to photography as a design student?At my university, Communication Design was a broad field. Each semester, we could choose from a wide range of topics, and besides graphic design, art history, and business classes, I made sure to take at least one photography class each semester. When I first started experimenting with digital photos, I often felt limited by my technical abilities, but I loved it so much that I was determined to improve.
The other reason was that most photography courses were taught by James Higginson, an Emmy-winning Art Director and filmmaker. He later supervised my bachelor’s thesis. James’s teaching was all-encompassing, covering everything from technical skills to art direction and art history. What he taught us about composition, lighting, technical aspects, and artistic expression completely opened my mind. Plus, James is just a great human being and fun to work with.
In my final semester, I took his art photography class. I couldn’t come up with a semester project for some time. One evening, though, as I watched my girlfriend’s old tube TV, that shutdown effect caught my attention. I must’ve seen it multiple times, but I was probably extra observant because I was actively looking for a project.
I grabbed my camera and began experimenting. Each photo looked similar but different, and that captivated me from the start. Capturing that moment wasn’t easy; it took time to get the rhythm right. After a few days, I found another TV to photograph, and the results were completely different from the first set—that’s when I was officially hooked.
From then on, I couldn’t pass by tube TVs without switching them on and off a few times to see if they’d be good subjects for photography, and that is until [even] today. The project gripped me right from the start, almost becoming an obsession to find and photograph new TVs. No previous work had ever absorbed me like this, so I was certain I wanted to pursue it as my bachelor’s project rather than a traditional communication design project. My professors saw potential in the work and supported my decision, and so it became my bachelor’s thesis.
What was the process like for capturing and printing these images? During the creation process, what challenges did you face, what aspects did you focus on, and were there any particular techniques or approaches you experimented with?The basic setup is pretty simple: a camera in front of the TV, one hand on the trigger, the other on the TV’s power button. Timing is crucial to capture the exact moment. I quickly realized it should be very dark to avoid reflections, and the screen has to be dust-free, as it’s nearly impossible to retouch the small particles on the screen. If there is a hair on the TV screen and I catch a great shot, that is frustrating.
I also prefer using a black input image instead of white noise or a TV signal since residual signal artifacts always felt too obvious to me.
Getting the timing right takes some practice, as the moment is fleeting. Once you get into a rhythm, the images start looking similar—never identical, though—so eventually, you have to disrupt your rhythm to capture more unique results. It took around 1,000 tries to get an image that wasn’t just a black screen due to being too late with the trigger, or that was worth considering for the series. This is only possible with digital photography, even though it meant tolerating some moiré effects.
I experimented with various TVs, old and new, and played around with settings like contrast and brightness. The results also change based on how long the TV had been running between shutoffs or whether I used the remote or the device’s power button. So many factors influenced the outcome, making it both addictive and challenging. And, of course, exposure speed is crucial. Shorter speeds produce more line-based shapes, while longer speeds create more solid shapes—all within a narrow range of exposure times. If the speed is faster than the TV’s frame rate, I get a black bar across the screen. But if it is too slow, the whole screen fills with light, which isn’t interesting as a motif.
How did the light appear differently depending on the television? And when it came to selecting the photos to present as final pieces, what sense or criteria guided your selection? Did you have clear guidelines for yourself?Each TV has its own unique characteristics that can, as mentioned, be altered by settings, timing, and other factors. The fundamental pattern is similar for all TVs, determined by the shadow mask behind the glass of the TV. But each one’s arrangement, shape, and coloring differs.
Choosing the final images took time. I wanted to showcase a wide range of what the effect could produce, yet ensure the motifs were cohesive enough to form a series. In the end, it was a mix of gradients, solid shapes, and line-based shapes. So it was a visually driven decision process.
Unlike fields like painting or sculpture, I imagine that expression in photography involves a significant element of unpredictability, even if you can set up the subject. For this series, were there particular moments you tried to capture during shooting, or did you leave room for an element of chance?I think every attempt’s outcome was a blend of camera settings, my timing, and whatever an old piece of analog tech decided to do at that moment—in other words, chance.
As you continued creating and delving deeper into your exploration, I’m sure you made many discoveries and gained new insights. Along the way, how did the initial themes or concepts you had in mind become more defined, or perhaps evolve into something different?From a visual standpoint, the series is almost inexhaustible. Before it’s even possible to shoot the same motif twice, I’ll likely run out of TVs. I recently started experimenting with AI tools to extend the series but haven’t yet found an appealing angle to merge AI with analog tech in a new concept.
Conceptually, I’m fascinated by how media and the meaning of truth have shifted in recent years. Turning off a TV is quite a simple metaphor for that. I often think of this idea in relation to Luminant Point Arrays, as they’re derived from relics of analog technology, a pure form, that are then switched off to capture a moment with a potentially different narrative. But I haven’t fully worked out this idea for myself yet.
When people first encounter Luminant Point Arrays, many are likely drawn to it purely as a visual experience, without knowing its concept or that it’s a photograph of a tube television screen. As the creator, were you conscious of how viewers might interpret or perceive the work?At exhibitions, I always include a descriptive text. I considered not explaining the process behind the images, but people seem to really enjoy knowing they came from old tube TVs, especially visitors who remember the effect of switching one off. I often hear from visitors about what they initially thought the image was before reading the description, which I find interesting. Most people assume it’s some form of digital art.
Art In The Age Of...Planetary Computation
Witte de With, Rotterdam
2015
Luminant Screen Shapings uses black-and-white televisions as subjects, in contrast to Luminant Point Arrays. Aside from the difference between color and monochrome, what other contrasts did you observe?The process is more or less the same, but visually, B&W TVs lack a shadow mask, so there’s no grid pattern. This gives the shapes a more floating, organic quality, almost like smoke. The grid pattern makes the Luminant Point Arrays very technical and futuristic. So I think the aesthetics of the two series fit the source they each come from very well.