In the early 1990s, Wolfgang Tillmans was known for chronicling Gen X and rave culture and taking portraits of musicians like Aphex Twin and the Blur front man Damon Albarn. He saw the acid-house-music nights at Opera House, in Hamburg, or the Love Parade, in Berlin, not just as hedonistic gatherings but as a political achievement. But outside the world of his photos, he has admitted, this freedom only existed in “little nuggets and pockets and areas.”


















