Guy Tillim: Beautiful Truths

In keeping with this issue’s theme of truth, Lee Sharrock talks to Guy Tillim, whose photojournalism has given exposure to the social and political struggles that have ravaged South Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa in the last few decades. But more than just reportage, the genius of Tillim’s work is that, while continuously exploring his own world view and version of truth, he’s produced exquisite, award-winning images that blend veracity with art

Guy Tillim has spent the best part of his career seeking the reality behind the façade, while developing a signature style and level of creativity unattainable by most. His powerful images of political unrest and war zones in Sub-Saharan Africa are not only historically important, but also creatively unique and visually arresting. 

Born in Johannesburg in 1962, Tillim began taking photographs professionally in 1986, when he became aware of the power of photography to record the injustices happening in his native South Africa and joined a collective of documentary photographers called Afrapix who used their cameras as tools to expose the racial gap created by apartheid. He also worked as a freelance photographer for local and foreign press and for the news agencies Reuters between 1986-1988 and Agence France-Presse from 1993 to 1994. 

Although he started out as a reportage photographer, Tillim’s images demonstrate empathy for the human condition, combined with an inquisitive eye and an innate ability for framing and capturing fleeting moments, and it is this ability to find beauty in the most harsh situations that has meant his images have transcended the categorisation of reportage photography, and been shown in museums, galleries and art biennials the world over. They have also won him a host of awards, including the Leica Oskar Barnack Award in 2005 and the first Robert Gardner Fellowship in Photography from the Peabody Museum at Harvard University in 2006. 

Tillim spoke to me from his Johannesburg home about his motive in taking up photography and his mission to portray the truth. “I’m interested in looking behind my way of looking. One arrives at making an image with such preconceptions and prejudice that I think it might be better to let a scene speak through one, as it were. If that’s the case then there is of course the question, ‘who are you?’, and that could become a life quest,” he muses. “I become less and less interested in looking at images that tell me what to look at. It’s the great advantage of a camera, that it has a possibility to be a window onto the world. The question of truth, of context really, then perhaps ceases to arise. I wanted to see for myself what was going on in my country as a twenty-something year old.  I was part a group of photographers who saw ourselves almost as activists and we had our version of the truth. The world wanted to know what was going on in South Africa and I was working at that time. It became a motivation, but the original intention was to discover my own environment and the camera is an extraordinary tool for doing that.”

Darkroom or digital truths will out

Tillim’s photographs possess an empathy for humanity and often examine the carnage and destruction of natural environments and people’s lives through war. His images of power struggles in the Democratic Republic of Congo include his own personal favourite, Salute at Goma, a shot of a man saluting Laurent Kabila after his rebel army’s capture of the town from the Mobutu government in 1996. While his later Congo Democratic series of 2003 feature a shot of a UN helicopter landing at the militia stronghold of Bunyatenge, in which an armed man crouches to hide from flying debris, and an image of the looted remains of Mobutu Sese Seko’s residence at Gbadolite speaks volumes through its emptiness. Even under pressure in challenging and dangerous situations, Tillim has an innate ability to compose artistically: “In the moment you don’t have a lot of time to think of the human condition or anything like that. It’s just happening in front of you. But the framing of the image does have to be informed by certain thoughts.”

Tillim’s work does invite comparison to Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Capa, photojournalists who similarly blended reportage with fine art. Capa’s famous Falling Soldier – depicting a soldier being shot during the Spanish civil war, has, since it was published in 1936, been the subject of debate about its authenticity. I asked Tillim if he feels that now we live in a digital age where manipulation is commonplace, fake images are more abundant, and if he, as a 35mm lover, mourns the demise of the darkroom: “Capa’s photo is authentic. The truth is usually revealed. People were in darkrooms manipulating the negative when I started making photographs, the drama of light and shadow could always be mediated and changed. It was more an area for specialists then, particularly in publishing, but now everyone is making photos so the vocabulary has expanded immensely. Perhaps now intention is becoming more evident as the visual language becomes more nuanced. Man Ray turned Kiki de Montparnasse into a violin [Le Violon d’Ingres],” he goes on, “the surrealists had a great time chopping peoples heads off, including their own. If you’re going to manipulate the elements of an image to try to convey a certain point of view, the intention, or lack of it will be revealed.”

Guy Tillim features in the exhibition Constructing Worlds: Photography and Architecture in the Modern Age, at London’s Barbican from 25 September 2014 – 11 January 2015