PHOTOGRAPHS
Tillmans, Wolfgang
Germany (1968 - )
Space Between Two Buildings
1996
Chromogenic color print mounted on aluminum panel
19 3/4 x 23 3/4 in. (50.2 x 60.3 cm) image size; 22 1/4 x 26 1/4 in. (56.5 x 66.7 cm) mount panel size;16 7/8 x 23 3/4 in. (42.9 x 60.3 cm) sheet size; 22 7/8 x 26 13/16 x 1 9/16 in. (58.1 x 67.8 x 4 cm) frame size
Gift of Burt and Jane Berman
FA 2005.130

In the summer of 1996, independent curator France Morin invited ten contemporary artists to live, work, worship with, and observe the Shaker community in Sabbathday Lake, Maine as the first installment of The Quiet in the Land (a series of projects urging artists to depict life in secluded rural communities through varying mediums). The community, founded in 1783, had hundreds of residents in its early days, but by 1997 the population had dwindled to only seven Believers. Today it is the only active Shaker community in the world. Though Shaker society is generally seen as archaic and often viewed through an historical lens, Wolfgang Tillmans resisted the tendency to represent the residents of Sabbathday Lake in this manner. Instead he depicted the Believers and their life as they truly are: a busy community that is not only comfortable with their place in society at large, but very aware of the cultural and ideological space that separates them from others. This ideological space became a main theme of the project as a whole, including Tillmans’ individual piece, Space Between Two Buildings. Whereas Tillmans’ work questioned the perception of the empty space between things asking, “what is the photograph of, if not infinite space divided and bounded by the presence of finite buildings,” the Shakers of Sabbathday Lake perceive the space that separates buildings, ideals, and ways of life as, “a continuum that is more significant than its individual elements.”

-- Label copy for Wolfgang Tillmans, October 15, 2011, to February 12, 2012.