Wolfgang Tillmans and the Story of Blond’s Cover

Written By Kyle Wheelock
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            The cover of Frank Ocean’s Blond (also stylized as, “Blonde,”) says a lot about the album, more than most people would realize without listening to it an inordinate amount of times. On the surface it’s a simple picture of Frank Ocean in a bathroom, covering his face, while some mid-winter sunlight creeps over him via a bathroom window.

            But beneath that, it’s also a perfect representation of the many entangled themes that awaits listeners.

            The architect behind this piece is iconic German photographer, Wolfgang Tillmans. I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume that almost everyone reading this right now has never heard of Tillmans, and is wondering why exactly he’s, “iconic,” (for the ~3% of people reading this who already know about Tillmans, I apologize).

            The answer to that question, as well as others you might have, are all readily available to us, thanks to the internet. But, they require a bit of deep diving so, just stick with me here.

            Wolfgang Tillmans was born in 1968 in Remscheid, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. As a youth, he spent a LOT of time visiting various art museums and was inspired by the works of various visual artists like Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke, Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol (Jobey, 2010).

A young Wolfgang Tillmans in the 90s

A young Wolfgang Tillmans in the 90s

            In the mid-late 80s, he bought a cheap camera, and embarked on his photography journey. He established a name for himself with his photos covering the gay club scene and red-light district in Hamburg (most of which were published primarily by i-D, if you really look hard enough you can find them floating around).

            Tillmans continued to work with i-D in the 1990s, while he was living in England. He enrolled at Bournemouth College of Art and Design in 1990, then moved to London in ’92 (he still bounces back and forth between London and Berlin). This was when Tillmans’ career really started to gain traction; one of his most famous pictures, Lutz and Alex sitting in the trees, was taken around this time, and it didn’t take long for it to reach the iconic status it still has to this day.

            His Lutz and Alex series, combined with his other pieces from this time made Tillmans something like a star in the counterculture, although he himself says this was never his intention,

“Back then, magazines like i-D were the only places where I could publish what I would describe as my re-enactments of potentially real situations. It was never my intention to be seen as diaristic or autobiographical. I was not recording the world around me or my tribe or whatever. There is a big misunderstanding there that still persists to this day.”

- Wolfgang Tillmans (O'Hagan, 2017)

            So, what was he trying to do? After consuming an unhealthy number of interviews, the best way to describe is true intention was to just show real life.

            “What does that even mean,” you’re undoubtedly wondering? Well, a simplified version would be this: Wolfgang Tillmans is an openly gay man and has been since his Hamburg years. I promise I only mention that because that experience has given Tillmans and his work a different perspective on the world around him.

“I wanted to somehow represent what was not being represented elsewhere. Even though my early photographs are re-enactments, they are showing people at rest and at ease with themselves. They are not doing silly poses or wrapped up in fashion. In that way, they are images of a kind of freedom that was not being expressed honestly elsewhere.”

- Wolfgang Tillmans (O'Hagan, 2017)

            Living as a gay man, Tillmans felt that art and photography wasn’t TRULY representing real life (he said it himself, magazines like i-D were the only ones who would publish his photos). Going back to his Hamburg days, he saw people truly living and being who they were and felt like that feeling should be preserved and shared. It just so happened that, in some cases, those people would be gay.

“I am more into shifting the centre ground. I never wanted to be a so-called gay artist, for instance, even though homosexuality is there in my work, but as an everyday thing. It wasn’t about representing ‘the other’.”

- Wolfgang Tillmans, (O'Hagan, 2017)

            Although, this philosophy has shifted slightly. In 1997, while Tillmans was in a relationship with another German artist, painter Jochen Klein, Klein was diagnosed with HIV. The diagnoses came too late for Klein, and he tragically passed way from HIV/AIDS related complications just several weeks later. To make the situation even more harrowing, Tillmans also learned that now he had the disease himself.

            Being diagnosed with the same disease that had taken his partner’s life in such a short time shook Tillmans to his core, and left him with a new outlook on life.

“People take everything for granted now and we have to be aware that what we enjoy is fragile because there are always people who are pushing against it. Fundamentalists, far right people and extreme capitalists all push against the space that we enjoy…AIDS has always been in my life since I have been an adult. It has featured in my work in a way, but I'm aware of the fragility of life.”

- Wolfgang Tillmans (Stoppard, 2017)

            Militant would be a bit extreme to describe Tillmans’ new approach to life and photography, but he definitely was more open/forward about being an advocate for LGBTQ communities, as well as HIV/AIDS awareness.

            In 2001, Tillmans won first place in a competition to design the AIDS memorial for the City of Munich, a monument which still stands. A year later in 2002, he captured another of his most iconic shots, The Cock (Kiss) at a gay nightclub in London. Much like his future collaboration with Frank Ocean, the portrait is a relatively simple one that has come to mean so much more.

The Cock (Kiss), 2002

The Cock (Kiss), 2002

            During one of its earlier exhibitions, The Cock (Kiss) was vandalized and slashed while on display at the Hirshhorn Museum in D.C. In 2011, Tillmans wrote about the experience,

“I’m always aware that one should never take things for granted, never take liberties for granted. For hundreds and hundreds of years this was not normal, not acceptable, and this term of acceptable is really what I connect beauty to. So, sometimes I’m said to be turning everyday subject matter into beautiful things, and I find that a bit uncritical, unless it is connected to that beauty is of course always political, as in it describes what is acceptable or desirable in society. That is never fixed, and always needs reaffirming and defending.”

- Wolfgang Tillmans, 2011

            The Cock (Kiss) later reappeared in 2016, following the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando. The portrait began circulating around social media shortly after the tragedy, as a display of pride and solidarity in the face of deadly, aggressive homophobia.

            And then there’s 17 Years’ Supply (2014), a photo of a fairly large box filled with various HIV/AIDS medications, some of which bear Tillmans’ name. It’s been interpreted to be a visualization of the fight that millions of people go through just to stay alive, and again draws on Tillmans’ own awareness of life’s fragility:

17 Years’ Supply

17 Years’ Supply

“I kept those packages out of respect and fascination for modern pharmacology. I am of course extremely grateful for the British and American companies that make these drugs that keep me alive. But I am also curious about the substances, and what these substances do in my body to keep it from falling ill… This picture also marks the arrival of HIV in the group of treatable diseases. The fear of death, that was so pervasive for people in the 1980s, is no longer there — as long as these medicines exist and are taken regularly. But if those medicines are no longer made and paid for, then my life is over. So this is a very existential question for me.”

- Wolfgang Tillmans, (Buck, 2019)

me in the Shower

me in the Shower

            As mundane as the above pictures may look to some, to others they are very powerful pieces, a criticism that has persisted throughout all of Tillmans’ work since his early days. For Tillmans, a lot of life is actually remarkable if we (as a society) would just pay attention.

            This approach has led to Tillmans racking up several awards for his art over the years, namely the Tate Organizations Turner Prize in 2000. The Turner Prize is an annual award typically handed to British visual artists for their work. I say typically because Tillmans was the first non-British person to win the award (although he was/is based at least partially in London for some years so, y’know).

            Tillmans’ impressive resume and cultural impact played a role in Fantastic Man commissioning him to photograph Frank Ocean for their 10th anniversary issue in 2014-15ish. Told you there was a lot to unpack here.

            Ocean and Tillmans appreciated each other’s work as artists (in fact, Frank has written at length about the same 70s-80s gay club culture that Tillmans grew up in and photographed), but as collaborators it was a difficult process, to say the least. The shoot was difficult to arrange, as Ocean would repeatedly cancel, reschedule, and cancel again for a variety of reasons.

            Eventually Tillmans gave up, and retired to his home in Berlin. Coincidentally, Ocean wanted to visit Berghain, a famous nightclub in Berlin. By now, Tillmans was rightfully doubtful but, sure enough, Ocean eventually made the drive from London to Berlin and (after another setback due to Berghain being closed) the two spent the night clubbing (Hogan, 2016).

            After this, they finally had the Blond shoot. Or, what would EVENTUALLY become the Blond shoot. Nobody knew this at the time, especially Fantastic Man or Tillmans, so it was quite the gut check when Ocean’s legal team sent letters to Fantastic Man, forbidding them from using the picture.

i’m a morning person, one of the other photos to come from Tillmans and Ocean’s session

i’m a morning person, one of the other photos to come from Tillmans and Ocean’s session

            As you can probably imagine, Tillmans was…frustrated, to say the least. He called the entire process unfair but despite this, the two artists kept in touch and would occasionally chat. It was during these conversations that Tillmans let Ocean know of his own musical efforts.

            Oh yeah, did I mention Wolfgang Tillmans also dabbles in music? Because, he does.

            Going way back to his days in England, he was a fan of bands such as Colourbox, Bronksi Beat, Joy Division, and New Order. He would occasionally DJ during his exhibitions, where he played mixes, as well as his own original compositions. In 2014 he even opened a playback room with two state of the art speakers, so visitors could listen to music in the same studio quality that it was created in, instead of through their phone’s speakers.

“In my life music functions on a par with art – it evokes similar feelings and understanding of the world…I don't feel that the complexity and quality of a record is represented in the way that artistic thought is represented.”

- Wolfgang Tillmans (Needham, 2014)

            For the photographer, making music is just a natural extension of his visual art. He sent Ocean a few of his pieces during their conversations, and the singer gravitated towards “Device Control,” a seven-minute dance track with strong synth-pop and post-punk vibes.

            Ocean loved the song so much that he asked Tillmans if he could sample it on his visual album, Endless. Tillmans agreed, and “Device Control,” both starts and ends the project (on the visual album version anyway, the track is missing from the audio version).

            Now, the full story of what Endless is, why it exists, and what it did for both Frank Ocean, AND the music industry as a whole, is a long and complicated tale that deserves its own article (the EXTREMELY short version is: Frank finessed a major label. Like I said, it’s complicated), BUT the part that pertains to this long ass story is that Endless was when Ocean asked Tillmans if he could use his photo for another upcoming album. Tillmans agreed and the rest is history.

            Blond released on August 20, 2016 and the cover has been meme’d to death since then. But, beyond that, the album is also incredibly dense, and has become just as divisive as the work Wolfgang Tillmans had done up to that point.

            The album takes an abstract approach to several equally abstract themes, such as heartbreak, loneliness, the idea of masculinity vs. femininity, and nostalgia. That last one is key here: Ocean has stated that a big influence on him during the Blond sessions was a picture of a girl wearing a seatbelt, covering her face. He drew a lot from this image, and it even landed in the accompanying Boys Don’t Cry zine that released alongside Blond.

IG: infinnatejoy

IG: infinnatejoy

            He wrote in-depth about it on his Tumblr but, again, this article is already entirely too long. The key here is that, the feelings and thoughts Ocean got from the photo undoubtedly manifested in both the songs and album cover of Blond. He talked about picturing himself in the girl’s position, feeling claustrophobic because of the seatbelt, and wiggling back and forth to free himself.

            Indeed, throughout Blonde, Frank is freeing himself from several things. He’s freeing himself from the expectations placed on him as a man, freeing himself from sexual stereotypes, from heartbreak and, in a literal sense, he’s freeing himself from a record label. Despite him telling us all the ins and outs of these processes, we don’t see is face in Tillmans’ portrait; there’s a disconnect between the openness we’re hearing, and the closedness we’re seeing.

            All of this from a single photo by a photographer who made his career capturing people being free in simple and often misunderstood photos. Additionally, as LGBT men, sexuality has been a significant piece of both Tillmans and Ocean’s artistry, and both have done incredible jobs representing and advocating for their community. The two are so like-minded, their collaborations feel like natural continuations of things they’ve both been doing for their whole lives.

 

Proof:

Kyle Wheelock
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