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| Photo © Guy Tilim.Typing pool, Town Hall, Likasi, DR Congo, 2007 |
| "They are warm tones you would find in old, fading 70s colour photographs. Except in Tilim’s Congo, that ambience seems to be permanent.” |
Words by Zarina Holmes
“If you like Eggleston’s Paris, you will love Guy Tilim. In fact you will cry when you see his works,” said my friend Vincent after my visit to Fondation Cartier in Paris.
Guy Tilim’s name rang a bell. He is a great figure of contemporary South African photography.
I saw four of his works at The Photographers Gallery in London earlier this year.
They were impressive but unfortunately suffocated by the coffee and carrot cake atmosphere of the gallery’s café, where they were unjustly displayed.
This time I saw his works at Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, which is located in a quiet nook of Montparnesse district in Paris.
It was a religious experience seeing a single photographer’s works occupying two storeys of a gallery space. Not just an average gallery too.
The Photographers Gallery curators have plenty to learn from their Parisian counterpart.
They’ve already been criticised by a few London reviewers for overlooking important talents.
The exhibition was titled Jo’burg/Avenue Patrice Lumumba, a collection of Tilim’s images of Congo, Johannesburg and Malawi.
Avenue Patrice Lumumba reportage is about Africa’s avenues of broken dreams.
Patrice Lumumba was the first prime minister of Congo who was murdered by Belgian agents, a year after securing the country’s independence from Belgium in 1960.
Who would have thought the tiny country now famous for sprouts, fine chocolates and dullness were CIA bedfellow at the height of the Cold War.
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| Photo © Guy Tilim. City Hall offices, Lubumbashi, DR Congo, 2007 |
| "I was born into a landscape that became unfamiliar as I grew to know it.” |
Tilim’s photographs depict scenes of strange and beautiful hybrid landscape of a country struggling to contain the calamities of the past fifty years.
I laughed when I saw them. But it was the kind of laughter you would get after you pass the point of despair. Tilim saw God’s peculiar sense of humour and preserved it on lens.
Somehow I was reminded of the 1980 cult film The Gods Must Be Crazy by Jamie Uys, only with a lot less humour.
We see surreal situations such as government servants staring away from ancient typewriters and ceiling-high stacks of yellowing court record papers.
We sense abandonment from the collapsing shelves of the City Hall, shadowy children trading mobile phones, toddlers running happily next to broken glass windows (I have never seen so many unrepaired windows before) and banners set on fire.
Tilim’s artistic execution was spectacular. Many of his images are warmed with pink hues, a colour I have never associated with Africa or hopelessness before.
They are warm tones you would find in old, fading 70s colour photographs. Except in Tilim’s Congo, that ambience seems to be permanent.
Avenue Patrice Lumumba has broken the sky above me. It was a painted mural that Tilim had pierced with his photographs to reveal another truth.
It wasn't just another poverty porn. Tilim was born in Johannesburg and served as a reporter in the 80s during the twilight years of the Apartheid. He is a part of the subject matter.
He said, “I was born into a landscape that became unfamiliar as I grew to know it. The mirror of my mind’s eye transposed political play into flickering stage. The impulse to photograph this stage is less an attempt to anchor the scenery than to situate myself.”
Jo’Burg/Avenue Patrice Lumumba, 13 January to 19 April 2009. Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, Rue de l'Ouest, Paris. www.henricartierbresson.org
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