Wolfgang Tillmans Remain

German fine-art photographer Wolfgang Tillmans created a visual campaign alerting people to the real risk of the UK’s EU referendum resulting in a victory for Leave.

Wolfgang Tillmans, with assistants at his London and Berlin studios and Between Bridges, designed a series of posters to encourage people to vote for the UK to stay in the European Union on the refernedum of 23 June.

The posters are available to be downloaded, printed and shared by anyone. They work as print your own PDFs, or on social media, or in any other way you can think of. Tillmans considers them open-source.

Wolfgang Tillmans Remain — Wolfgang Tillmans: Remain campaign

“Dear Friends,” writes Tillmans on his website, “I’m sure you are also following with horror the rightwards drift and anti-EU sentiment brewing across Europe. The Dutch referendum should be the final wake-up call, alerting people to the real risk of the UK’s EU referendum resulting in a victory for Leave. The official ‘Remain’ campaign feels lame and is lacking in passion. It also lacks an active drive to get voters registered – and with the deadline already falling two weeks before the referendum, this should be an urgent priority.”

“I want to get involved and actively campaign. In particular, I want to work towards maximizing turnout among younger voters by focusing on the first, crucial step: voter registration – the deadline for which is June 7! So anyone who hasn’t registered before this date has no chance of having a say, no matter how strongly they feel about the issue. So the really crucial date is June 7. Everyone’s grannies registered their vote long ago, but students no longer get automatically registered by their unis. This is because of a new law brought in by the Conservatives that makes it possible for them to disenfranchise up to 800,000 students, who as a group tend to move around a lot more and so drop off the voter register easily. I feel that we have reached a critical moment that could prove to be a turning point for Europe as we know and enjoy it – one that might result in a cascade of problematic consequences and political fall-out. Firstly, the weakening of the EU is a goal being actively pursued by strongmen like Vladimir Putin and European parties on the far-right. Brexit could effectively spell the end of the EU. It’s a flawed and problematic institution, but on the whole it stands for a democratic worldview, human rights and favours cooperation over confrontation.”