Wolfgang Tillmans was born on August 16, 1968, in Remscheid, Germany. As a teenager, he kept a scrapbook of found photographs, but he did not begin taking his own photography seriously until a year before he finished high school, when he made Lacanau, an image of his own leg as he walked on a beach. From 1987 to 1988, he worked as a switchboard operator at a community help organization in Hamburg, where he used the photocopier to enlarge found media photographs. In 1988, he became involved in the local rave scene and began documenting this emerging subculture. His snapshot-like photographs of young people were subsequently published in progressive magazines such as i-D and Prinz. During the period of 1992-1995 time, he began to show more frequently, developing an exhibition style that consisted of nonhierarchical arrangements of unframed photographs tacked onto the gallery's walls. The personal, celebratory nature of his photography took a dark turn in 1997, when his partner Jochen Klein died of AIDS; an untitled series from this period documents simple details such as a last meal and a view from the hospital window. In 2001, he made the film Light (Body) and collaborated on a video for the pop music duo the Pet Shop Boys.