Congratulations to Wolfgang Tillmans on receiving the Henri Cartier-Bresson Lifetime Achievement Award.
Introduced in 2024, the award celebrates a photographer or an artist working with photography, in recognition of their outstanding contribution to the photographic medium. Presented annually at the Fondation H. Cartier-Bresson, the award recognizes singular creators whose work has profoundly shaped the history of photography.
Wolfgang Tillmans’s work was honoured during a heartfelt tribute by artist and musician Michael Stipe who celebrated their friendship, their artistic collaboration, and Tillmans’ influence on the international scene.
From London to New York, via Paris, Basel, Lagos and Tokyo, his work has been shown in many of the world’s leading institutions. Following a major retrospective at the Tate Modern in 2017, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York devoted a large-scale exhibition to him in 2022, To Look Without Fear, tracing three decades of his practice.
In 2025, the Centre Pompidou in turn hosted Rien ne nous y préparait – Tout nous y préparait, an exhibition spanning 6,000 square meters of the Bibliothèque publique d’information. Taking over this unique site - reimagining its furniture and architecture, he presented a creative dialogue between his images, the space and its memory.
Through the freedom of his installations, explorations, his vision and his constant reinvention of the image, Wolfgang Tillmans has made a major contribution to contemporary photography and this is truly a lifetime achievement award.
