Wolfgang Tillmans, *Adam’s Crotch*, 1991

Afterimage by Sarah Moroz:

“Sloppy has always been good, meant sexy,” Eileen Myles wrote in her iconic book Chelsea Girls. I would agree with Eileen. Her statement is contemporaneous with when Wolfgang Tillmans was photographing youth culture, in the first half of the ‘90s. His images depict people who are sloppy in the most gratifying sense: casual, heedless, uninhibited. He captures a state of being, a shrugging feeling that trickles down to posture and style. The Berlin Wall had come down, and ideas of structure and stability wobbled profoundly along with it — what could be re-conceived? Everything. Anything.

Tillmans counters photographic flatness through sheer proximity to the body, in almost invasive close-up: right up in an armpit with sweaty tufts of hair, right up alongside the shimmer of sweat slicking the clavicle. In Adam’s Crotch, ripped, fringed, scuffed, hole-riddled jeans go beyond heavy wear to a reflection of living hard: thighs rubbing together for all-consuming movements and reckless experiences, which translate into garments shredded thin, patchworked back together — and still are coming undone. Whatever party has been cut out of the frame out can still be felt from the tight crop. Hands resting lightly, underwear showing indifferently: there’s a serenity to not fretting about what looks appropriate, because propriety is a myth.

The photo is simply a display of being comfortable in a laissez-faire setting; it’s observing leisure and idleness. A close-up of a crotch could ostensibly be an aggressive move, but here it speaks to ease between photographer and subject, the camaraderie of not having to be polite and careful: that Adam’s boundaries melt into Wolfgang’s.