The purely abstract 'cameraless pictures' create an interesting dialogue with Tillmans' representational photographs - one invariably informs our reading of the other and vice-versa. Tillmans deliberately conflates the languages of abstraction and figuration as if to shift the ground from under us. How do we distinguish between nature and the artifice in works such as Blautopf (Baum) 2001? The shaded tree trunk in the foreground could well be a Tillmans' intervention, whilst the vivid green-blue of the water might have been heightened through filters. The image is in fact completely natural, but by placing it near manipulated images such as Icestorm and Quarry II (both 2001) Tillmans makes us more sensitive to the ambiguities.
paper drop, 2001 © Wolfgang Tillmans, 2003	Aside from the interventions Tillmans continues to refine his formal language, concentrating on more prosaic, pared-down imagery. Paper Drop 2001 lovingly records the curve of a piece of photographic paper, whilst Chair 2001 is simply that, a familiar piece of furniture bathed in an even light, examined close-up. Much of Tillmans' imagery is grounded in this kind of everyday experience, he isolates very basic motifs and focuses on their physical qualities. He is constantly questioning how we attribute value to things, and this inspired a recent project where he began photographing gold bars, 'trying to picture the most fundamental standard of material value and exchange'. Seeing this subject-matter alongside the more domestic and quotidian we again sense the balancing of extremes in Tillmans' work.