When Wolfgang Tillmans photographed Susanne Oberbeck for No Bra’s Love and Power, it was more than a collaboration, it was the meeting of two unapologetic visionaries who thrive on challenging conventions.
A Portrait Beyond the Frame
Wolfgang Tillmans, known for capturing the raw, the tender, and the unvarnished, brought his signature gaze to Oberbeck, the enigmatic force behind No Bra. The pair have know each other since meeting in London in 2001, but this project was spawned in Tillmans’ current home city, Berlin. The album cover for Love and Power is quintessential Tillmans: stark yet intimate, a portrait that feels less like a pose and more like a moment borrowed from life. It’s an image that doesn’t shout but lingers, inviting the viewer to sit with its quiet intensity.
For Tillmans, this collaboration was a natural extension of his oeuvre. His work has always embraced the countercultural and the subversive, making Oberbeck an ideal subject. As an artist who strips away artifice – whether in her music, her persona, or her politics – Oberbeck mirrors Tillmans’ own ethos of authenticity.
Oberbeck’s Raw Power
Susanne Oberbeck, with her deadpan delivery and minimalist electro-punk beats, has built No Bra into a platform for provocation. Love and Power is an uncompromising exploration of identity, sexuality, and societal hypocrisy, themes that resonate with Tillmans’ own body of work. In fact, the pairing feels almost inevitable: Tillmans and Oberbeck share an aesthetic that refuses to conform, that dares the audience to confront the uncomfortable and the unspoken. The Love and Power album cover encapsulates this defiance. With Oberbeck at its center, framed by Tillmans’ lens, the image is both a declaration and a question: What happens when we strip away pretense?
Where Love Meets Power
Their collaboration isn’t just a meeting of minds but a reflection of the mutual respect between two cultural disruptors. Tillmans’ portrait of Oberbeck doesn’t merely accompany the music; it becomes an extension of it, a visual manifesto that captures the album’s raw energy and unfiltered emotion.
The Power of Seeing
In Love and Power, Wolfgang Tillmans and Susanne Oberbeck deliver a work that transcends medium. The result is more than a photograph, more than an album—it’s a testament to the power of art to challenge, provoke, and reveal.
Image: Wolfgang Tillmans
