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The whole nature of photography has changed with the advent of a camera in everybody's hand.

Billions of photos are shot every year, and about the toughest thing a photographer can do is invent an original, deeply personal, instantly recognizable visual style. In the early nineties, Wolfgang Tillmans did just that, transforming himself into a new kind of artist-photographer of modern life.

I used to do a lot of casual photography - back in the olden times when one used film - but it had fallen by the wayside over the years.

You had to be aware that I saw that photography was a mere episode in the history of the optical projection and when the chemicals ended, meaning the picture was fixed by chemicals, we were in a new era.

Nowadays shots are created in post-production, on computers. It's not really photography.

I don't want to knock photography, and I don't feel that film is up there but photography isn't. I think they're next to each other really, you know. There's an incredible strength to a still picture. Or there can be an incredible strength to a still picture that can outlive you. That can outlive a film.

I can go into the wilderness and not see anyone for days and experience a kind of space that hasn't changed for tens of thousands of years. Having that experience was necessary to my perception of how photography can look at the changes humanity has brought about in the landscape. My work does become a kind of lament.

The still image continues to have a ton of strength. An image taken out of context from one fraction of a second to the next can tell a story, and if photographers are looking to tell a certain story, they can curate those slices of time to their advantage.

I've been working with photography for many years.