Guy Tillim's Departure
by Sean O'Toole
Published at the instance of Guy Tillim's trilogy of exhibitions earlier this year in Cape Town, Departure is a sumptuous showcase of this photojournalists output. At the outset, don't let the description photojournalist establish a bias. As Tillim writes in the preface: "My journeys have been idiosyncratic, often purposeless, not so much to commit journalism as to travel for its own sake."
Idiosyncratic, the ability to capture unusual, almost eccentric images, certainly sums up Tillim in a word. Yet his imagery is not simply peculiar, there is a life force that courses through his photographs. This is abundantly depicted in his photograph of a lone soldier saluting Laurent Kabile, in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The man stands astride a teaming mass of people, rigid against a backdrop of pulsing rhythm and blur.
This imprecision is repeated in another image depicting the police headquarters in the Angolan town of Luanda, as well as in a shot from Kabul Zoo, in Afghanistan. The locations of these photographs should make it abundantly clear that Tillim's work situates itself in places desecrated by war. Of course these are stock locations for any photojournalist, but as David Goldblatt remarked at the opening of 'Departure', at PhotoZA in Johannesburg, Tillim's work avoids the abjectness of fellow documentarists, such as James Nachtway.
This is because, despite adhering to Henri Cartier-Bresson's prescriptions, Tillim choices to portray rather awkward events or instances as the decisive moment. Take, for example, his image of a drummer and dancer in traditional attire performing on an open soccer field for a grouping of bureaucratic looking men, from Unity Day celebrations in Burundi. There is wry, near surreal unease to the photograph. The same holds true of Tillim's photograph of electric fans destined for the UN offices in Mozambique.
One image that particularly intrigued me was one showing two youths wrestling on a beach in Luanda. With South African photography slowly realising its place in the African canon, it was exciting to see an image that immediately reminded me of the great Malian photographer Malick Sidibe's beach portraits. In the context of the book the image might have a latent sense of unease, but it is also an optimistic portrait, of youth, of time and place, of Angola after the apocalypse.
In overview, the breadth of the images presented in Departure tends be quite sprawling. While this does offer the reader a very good introduction to Tillim's work, it does sometimes leave one feeling a little disorientated as the eye is randomly transported to vastly differing settings, each characterised by a definitive mood. But this is really only a minor gripe.
With each image spread across a double page, Departure amply illustrates why Tillim has been nominated for the 2003 DaimlerChrysler Art Award. While the book might have benefited from an essay, the excerpt of a poem by Arthur Rimbaud is suggestive enough. Indeed, words would probably have detracted from what is a rich tapestry of complex images presented as gifts from a complicated world.
Departure, Hardcover
Publisher: Michael Stevenson Contemporary & Bell-Roberts Publishing, 2003
ISBN: 0-620-30151-1
Price: R295
