When the German photographer Wolfgang Tillmans was just a teenager, he would visit museums in Düsseldorf and Cologne on the weekends. With awe he studied the photo-based art of Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke, Robert Rauschenberg, and Andy Warhol. In 1988, at Hamburg’s Café Gnosa, he hosted his own first solo exhibition. Tillmans became known for his casual, snapshot-like portraits of friends, people such as the German-born fashion designer Lutz Huelle. “The viewer,” Tillmans has said, “should enter my work through their own eyes, and their own lives.” For this landmark retrospective, the Pompidou’s last before closing for renovations, the photographer has been given free rein over the 64,000-square-foot library. It’s what the artist calls a “curatorial experiment.” One which may very well define his career. —Elena Clavarino