Jo'burg
by Ed Young
Of this book there is not much one can say, other than it is absolutely fucking gorgeous.
Guy Tillim's Jo'burg presents the reader/viewer with hard-hitting images of the vast social and economic divides faced by South African society (as in Tillim's previous publications of other parts of Africa). This book explores the extreme and harsh living conditions of present day inner-city Johannesburg residents, an area once home to big business, immortalised by Eighties rock stars and artists for its decadent nightlife.
As Tillim himself explains: 'Large corporations and white residents fled Johannesburg's inner city in the 1990s. The removal of the Group Areas Act foreshadowed a flow into the city of black residents and small black businesses seeking opportunities and looking for a better life. The former denizens looked back with righteous justifications at a city that was given over, if not to plunder, then to mayhem. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy; it was as it should be, and eyewitness reports and statistics obliged. We all had horror stories.'
At first glance this volume seems meticulously produced as a hard cover concertina-like book. When I was complimenting co-producer Michael Stevenson on the book he commented that: 'Yes, it is beautiful... all 17 metres of it.' Although the pull-out thing is a bit flimsy and obviously compromises the shelf-life of the book, the design is carefully considered and one is able to view the images as double-page spreads, rather than having to view the piece as the extended 17 metre landscape.
If the binding seems fragile, it is not unlike some of the subject matter exposed therein. But, it is Tillim's powerful imagery and subtle hues that contrast withthis. He provides the viewer with a compelling account of what lurks in the cities and what tends to be swept under the carpet (in the case of our readership) and shoved down derelict lift shafts (in the case of its residents). A number of these buildings have been without any water or electricity for some years now, and according to recent exposés these lift shafts have been filled with human excrement and, in one case, used as a good place for a dead body.
Whether Tillim is commenting on the Johannesburg Property Company's (JPC) Better Building Programme which manages 'bad' property for the City of Johannesburg seems irrelevant. What is powerful about the collection of images is that it provides a very 'there' fly-on-the-wall account of its current situation, while exposing but a tiny selection of harsh living conditions in South Africa.
What is impressive though, is that Tillim has used funds from his 2004 Daimler Chrysler Award to produce this project, and the body of work has already earned him the 2005 Leica Oskar Barnack Award. And to those cynics who were afforded the opportunity to express their concerns about Tillim's involvement in the arts as a documentary photographer, I will second Ivor Powell's Bill Bryson 'riposte': Fuck 'em! But this in itself might provide too much sensory pleasure for the idiots. So for now we will ignore them as these comments are old and pathetic. Welcome to the world of contemporary art.
I would see this book as extremely collectable, rather than a good read (as there is little text), and at R320 we can all have a little Tillim exhibition in our living rooms. Unfortunately those represented cannot.
Jo'burg
Trézélan and Johannesburg: Filigranes Editions and STE, 2005
One continuous gatefold in hardcovers. R320
ISBN: 2-35046-014-2
