German artist and photographer Wolfgang Tillmans was BOTD in 1968. Born in Remscheid, West Germany, he developed an early interest in art, and was inspired by the work of Gerhard Richter, Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol. In 1983, he visited England as an exchange student, immersing himself in London’s gay culture. On his return to Germany, he moved to Hamburg, where he mounted his first solo exhibitions. He returned to London in 1990, studying photography at the Bournemouth and Poole College of Art and Design. In 1994, he relocated to New York, forming a relationship with German painter Jochen Klein, remaining together until Klein’s death three years later from an AIDS-related illness. Tillmans is best known for his photographs of 1990s gay culture and nightlife, published in Interview, i-D, Spex and Butt magazines. His portraits of gay men, typically focused on punk, skinhead and working class sub-cultures, were at odds with the sleek buffed images of gay men by Herb Ritts and Bruce Weber. He also produced a series of portraits of queer artists for Index magazine, including John Waters, Gilbert & George and Udo Kier. In 2000, he won the Turner Prize, Britain’s most prestigious fine arts award, becoming the first photographer and non-British citizen to be so honoured. The following year, he won a competition to design an AIDS memorial for the city of Munich. He has also created music videos for the Pet Shop Boys and Frank Ocean. In 2022, he photographed Anthony Fauci for the New York Times to accompany a piece about Fauci’s retirement as director of the US National Institutes of Health. The newspaper subsequently published excerpts of Tillman’s and Fauci’s conversation, in which Tillman discussed living with HIV+ and the emotional legacy of surviving the 1990s HIV/AIDS epidemic. Openly gay since forever, Tillmans lives and works between London and Berlin. His current relationship status is unknown.