ART
Guy Tillim |
Written 30 January |
Tuesday 13 January, 13:00 - 00:00:13Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, 75014 [map]
The fragility of this strange and magnificently hybrid landscape, battling against the disasters that it has endured over the past fifty years reveals an undeniably African identity. It is this identity that I grasp” Guy Tillim
Guy Tillim, born in 1962 in Johannesburg is a major figure on the contemporary South African photographic scene. As a young journalist in the 1980s, Guy Tillim realised that photography could be used as a means of fighting against the racial divide that the Apartheid had created in his country “ The camera was the ideal tool for transcending barriers, and to see what was happening in my country” Over the years, Tillim has produced a body of documentary work of an undeniably visual and historical significance, a witness to the social conflict and inequalities that prevailed. In his images, harsh, sombre colours leap from a grim and grey background in harmony with the bitterness of his subjects. Johannesburg underwent a radical and controversial urban transformation at the end of Apartheid in 1991. In Jo’burg, also his birth town, Tillim explores those who were forgotten.
Avenue Patrice Lumumba (2008)
Patrice Lumumba, the first and only elected Prime Minister of the Congo, after winning at the Congo elections following the independence of Belgium in 1960, was assassinated in January 1961 after proclaiming his opposition to western neo-colonialism. Today still, numerous African towns, streets, avenues and squares are named after him.
