Kuckei Kuckei
GUY TILLIM
Interview by Corin Hirsch
South African photojournalist Guy Tillim, born and raised in Johannesburg, began taking pictures in the mid 1980s during the last days of apartheid. Initially part of the photocollective Afropix, Tillim went on to work in some of the most notoriously challenged parts of Africa, sometimes for agencies such as Agence France-Presse and Reuters. He has photographed child soldiers in Congo, refugees in Angola (’Kunhinga Portraits’) and life in the high rises of Johannesburg. But Tillim’s work counters First-World expectations of these places; in between his portraits of those caught in the aftermath of war or displacement, he is apt to capture the stillness of these spaces as well. During an election rally, he might shoot toward the sky, capturing the tops of raised arms beneath a tree that fills most of the frame; or turn away from the action to shoot the rapids of the Congo River, or an empty bed under mosquito netting. In famine-stricken Malawi, Tillim chose to take classically-lit, Caravaggio-like portraits of its residents. That these moments of repose dominate a body of work shot in some of the world’s most war-torn places is a testament to the quietude of Tillim’s vision. His photographs have a hush and luminosity that runs counter to traditional ideas of photojournalism.
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