{"id":87970,"date":"2026-06-21T09:19:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-21T15:19:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.opinionpublica.tv\/portada\/?p=87970"},"modified":"2026-06-21T09:19:16","modified_gmt":"2026-06-21T15:19:16","slug":"his-photographs-from-the-1990s-are-on-the-coolest-books-from-the-2020s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.opinionpublica.tv\/portada\/his-photographs-from-the-1990s-are-on-the-coolest-books-from-the-2020s\/","title":{"rendered":"His photographs from the 1990s are on the coolest books from the 2020s"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The novelist Vincenzo Latronico knew exactly what he wanted for the American cover of his novel \u201cPerfection,\u201d about a disaffected creative couple in Berlin obsessed with curating an exquisite lifestyle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The original Italian cover used an illustration; the English translation published in Britain by Fitzcarraldo Editions had the press\u2019s trademark cobalt blue. For the U.S. version, Latronico had something specific in mind: a 1999 still life of lilies in a plastic Pellegrino bottle by Wolfgang Tillmans, the Turner Prize-winning German photographer known for his intimate portraits and ecstatic images of nightlife.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The image was \u201csexy and decadent and fun,\u201d Latronico said, \u201cwhich is the way Berlin felt at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He assumed a photograph by Tillmans \u2014 a favorite of the fashion and music worlds, whose most recognizable work may be the portrait on the cover of Frank Ocean\u2019s album \u201cBlonde\u201d \u2014 would be \u201caiming too high.\u201d He pitched it to his publisher anyway. Latronico was pleasantly surprised when Tillmans agreed to license the image for an amount of money the independent press, New York Review Books, could afford.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPerfection\u201d became one of the most successful titles ever put out by the publisher, and one of the most talked-about books of 2025. At one point, Latronico had assumed his manuscript, a take on a French novella from the 1960s, was \u201cunpublishable.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nicholas During, a publicist at New York Review Books, said, \u201cI do think the design helps in sales,\u201d noting that the book had traveled well on social media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not just Latronico\u2019s book. Over the past several years, Tillmans\u2019s photographs have appeared on the covers of several \u201cit\u201d books, including \u201cCrudo\u201d by Olivia Laing, featuring a closely cropped image of a fly on the pink carcass of a crab; \u201cYoung Mungo\u201d by Douglas Stuart, with an image of a sweaty, exuberant kiss between two young men outside a club; and, more recently, \u201cHyperpolitics\u201d by Anton J\u00e4ger, whose bright yellow backdrop frames a portrait of a woman with her eyes closed, someone else\u2019s hands in her hair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The photographs seem to pair well with books that are a bit esoteric, experimental or academic, as in the case of J\u00e4ger\u2019s book, which examines how culture wars and online outrage have eclipsed political parties and institutions. (It\u2019s now in its third printing.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That may be because Tillmans\u2019s work \u201chas a certain urgency,\u201d said Julia Sch\u00e4fer, the design director at MoMA PS1 and a juror in a 2025 book cover competition. \u201cIt shows the world we live in, in a way that feels very approachable.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s also a contrast with the sometimes maligned multicolored blobs that dominated the covers of literary prize winners and celebrity book club picks alike in the late 2010s and early 2020s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI feel almost awkward for this to be the subject of an article,\u201d Tillmans, 57, wrote over email, adding that he worried a focus on his art could distract from the books themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said he typically received about 10 licensing requests for books a year. When deciding which ones to grant, he says he considers a book\u2019s focus, quality and connection to his own work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBecause the cover image is typically the only visual associated with a whole long sequence of type on pages,\u201d he said, \u201cI want to feel that it is the right fit.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last year, Tillmans staged an installation at the Centre Pompidou in Paris that included a display of books that have featured his work on their covers \u2014 more than 50 since 1994, including various editions by the filmmaker Gus Van Sant, the philosopher Slavoj Zizek and the Nobel laureate J.M.G. Le Cl\u00e9zio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tillmans occupies a distinctive position within contemporary visual culture because his practice \u201cdissolves the conventional boundaries separating photography, literature and design,\u201d said Roxana Marcoci, a senior curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York who organized its major Tillmans retrospective in 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tillmans has worked as a video artist, installation maker and architect. He\u2019s also had turns as a D.J., singer, record producer and occasional book editor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many of Tillmans\u2019s favorite collaborations have been with other queer artists and writers: He picked out \u201cOut of the Shadows: Reimagining Gay Men\u2019s Lives\u201d by Walt Odets, Van Sant\u2019s \u201cPink\u201d and \u201cYoung Mungo,\u201d Stuart\u2019s 2022 book about two teenage boys who fall in love, as titles he was particularly proud to have contributed to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen Douglas Stuart asked, I thought it was an interesting sign of the times that a major book publisher in the U.K. (but not the U.S.) was willing to put a gay kiss\u201d on the cover of a mainstream work of literary fiction, he wrote. (The British cover featured Tillmans\u2019s 2002 photograph \u201cThe Cock (Kiss).\u201d The U.S. cover used a photograph of a young boy underwater by the American photographer Kyle Thompson.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As books increasingly function as design objects or status symbols, a Tillmans cover can help signal a reader\u2019s sophistication and can turn even an erudite work of nonfiction into a minor cultural phenomenon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Minh Tran, a writer and podcast producer in Brooklyn, posted a photo on X of himself and another subway passenger tapping their matching copies of \u201cHyperpolitics\u201d together in an impromptu toast, with a caption saying it was something \u201cthat would happen on the g train.\u201d (Tran, though, added an expletive.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tran said he\u2019d sought out \u201cHyperpolitics\u201d because he was genuinely interested in the thesis. But he was also \u201cdrawn to the design,\u201d he said. The photograph on its cover, \u201cLove (hands in hair),\u201d is particularly irresistible to book designers: It has appeared on the covers of at least two other books since 2008.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At a literary festival recently, Latronico, the \u201cPerfection\u201d author, was tickled when he ran into Elise Winterthun, a Norwegian critic who told him she had gone looking for his book \u201cjust because she was seduced by the Tillmans cover,\u201d Latronico recalled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it wasn\u2019t out in Norway yet, and she discovered that the Tillmans cover belonged to the U.S. edition. She settled for the blue Fitzcarraldo edition instead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n