Guy Tillim

Joburg: Points of View, 2014

  • Park Station, 2013
    Park Station, 2013
    pigment ink on cotton paper, 108 × 144 cm each (large), 44 × 59 cm each (small)
    large in an edition of 3 + 1 AP, small in an edition of 5 + 1 AP
  • Tudhope Avenue, 2013
    Tudhope Avenue, 2013
    pigment ink on cotton paper, 108 × 144 cm each (large), 44 × 59 cm each (small)
    large in an edition of 3 + 1 AP, small in an edition of 5 + 1 AP
  • Sauer Street, 2013
    Sauer Street, 2013
    pigment ink on cotton paper, 108 × 144 cm each (large), 44 × 59 cm each (small)
    large in an edition of 3 + 1 AP, small in an edition of 5 + 1 AP
  • Carr Street, 2013
    Carr Street, 2013
    pigment ink on cotton paper, 108 × 144 cm each (large), 44 × 59 cm each (small)
    large in an edition of 3 + 1 AP, small in an edition of 5 + 1 AP
  • Ockerse Street, 2013
    Ockerse Street, 2013
    pigment ink on cotton paper, 108 × 144 cm each (large), 44 × 59 cm each (small)
    large in an edition of 3 + 1 AP, small in an edition of 5 + 1 AP
  • Beyers Naudé Square, 2013
    Beyers Naudé Square, 2013
    pigment ink on cotton paper, 108 × 144 cm each (large), 44 × 59 cm each (small)
    large in an edition of 3 + 1 AP, small in an edition of 5 + 1 AP
  • Bruce Street, 2013
    Bruce Street, 2013
    pigment ink on cotton paper, 108 × 144 cm each (large), 44 × 59 cm each (small)
    large in an edition of 3 + 1 AP, small in an edition of 5 + 1 AP
  • Simmonds Street, 2013
    Simmonds Street, 2013
    pigment ink on cotton paper, 108 × 144 cm each (large), 44 × 59 cm each (small)
    large in an edition of 3 + 1 AP, small in an edition of 5 + 1 AP
  • Simmonds Street, 2013
    Simmonds Street, 2013
    pigment ink on cotton paper, 108 × 144 cm each (large), 44 × 59 cm each (small)
    large in an edition of 3 + 1 AP, small in an edition of 5 + 1 AP
  • Quartz Street, 2013
    Quartz Street, 2013
    pigment ink on cotton paper, 108 × 144 cm each (large), 44 × 59 cm each (small)
    large in an edition of 3 + 1 AP, small in an edition of 5 + 1 AP
  • Sauer Street, 2013
    Sauer Street, 2013
    pigment ink on cotton paper, 108 × 144 cm each (large), 44 × 59 cm each (small)
    large in an edition of 3 + 1 AP, small in an edition of 5 + 1 AP
  • Ghandi Square, 2013
    Ghandi Square, 2013
    pigment ink on cotton paper, 108 × 144 cm each (large), 44 × 59 cm each (small)
    large in an edition of 3 + 1 AP, small in an edition of 5 + 1 AP
  • Charles Street, 2013
    Charles Street, 2013
    pigment ink on cotton paper, 108 × 144 cm each (large), 44 × 59 cm each (small)
    large in an edition of 3 + 1 AP, small in an edition of 5 + 1 AP
  • Bree Street, 2013
    Bree Street, 2013
    pigment ink on cotton paper, 108 × 144 cm each (large), 44 × 59 cm each (small)
    large in an edition of 3 + 1 AP, small in an edition of 5 + 1 AP
  • Albertina Sisulu Road, 2013
    Albertina Sisulu Road, 2013
    pigment ink on cotton paper, 108 × 144 cm each (large), 44 × 59 cm each (small)
    large in an edition of 3 + 1 AP, small in an edition of 5 + 1 AP
  • Jeppe Street, 2013
    Jeppe Street, 2013
    pigment ink on cotton paper, 108 × 144 cm each (large), 44 × 59 cm each (small)
    large in an edition of 3 + 1 AP, small in an edition of 5 + 1 AP
  • Ntemi Piliso Street, 2013
    Ntemi Piliso Street, 2013
    pigment ink on cotton paper, 108 × 144 cm each (large), 44 × 59 cm each (small)
    large in an edition of 3 + 1 AP, small in an edition of 5 + 1 AP
  • Sauer Street, 2013
    Sauer Street, 2013
    pigment ink on cotton paper, 108 × 144 cm each (large), 44 × 59 cm each (small)
    large in an edition of 3 + 1 AP, small in an edition of 5 + 1 AP
  • Empire Road, 2013
    Empire Road, 2013
    pigment ink on cotton paper, 108 × 144 cm each (large), 44 × 59 cm each (small)
    large in an edition of 3 + 1 AP, small in an edition of 5 + 1 AP
  • Civic Centre, 2013
    Civic Centre, 2013
    pigment ink on cotton paper, 108 × 144 cm each (large), 44 × 59 cm each (small)
    large in an edition of 3 + 1 AP, small in an edition of 5 + 1 AP
  • Hall Street, 2013
    Hall Street, 2013
    pigment ink on cotton paper, 108 × 144 cm each (large), 44 × 59 cm each (small)
    large in an edition of 3 + 1 AP, small in an edition of 5 + 1 AP
  • Wolmarans Street, 2013
    Wolmarans Street, 2013
    pigment ink on cotton paper, 108 × 144 cm each (large), 44 × 59 cm each (small)
    large in an edition of 3 + 1 AP, small in an edition of 5 + 1 AP
  • Esselen Street, 2013
    Esselen Street, 2013
    pigment ink on cotton paper, 108 × 144 cm each (large), 44 × 59 cm each (small)
    large in an edition of 3 + 1 AP, small in an edition of 5 + 1 AP
  • Biccard Street, 2013
    Biccard Street, 2013
    pigment ink on cotton paper, 108 × 144 cm each (large), 44 × 59 cm each (small)
    large in an edition of 3 + 1 AP, small in an edition of 5 + 1 AP
  • Marshall Street, 2014
    Marshall Street, 2014
    pigment ink on cotton paper, 108 × 144 cm
    edition of 3 + 1 AP

At that time, Johannesburg offered a provocation to Tillim’s understanding of documentary photography and debates around representing a politically contested landscape. More recently, the artist has been increasingly interested in notions of judgment and control around image-making, which he explored in Second Nature (2011-12). In this series of images taken in Polynesia and São Paulo the viewer is not offered a conventional point of focus or easily identifiable subject that is the standard premise for photography. Instead, the paradox of photographing nothing yet everything, and of observing the resultant conflation of subject and object, becomes the premise for his photography. His next series, Libreville (2012-13), pushed this investigation further, bringing the formal concerns of Second Nature to bear on an African city that visibly declares its ongoing struggle with ideological power.

Of the new series, Tillim writes:

In 2004 I spent four months in downtown Johannesburg. I saw the city then as a giant puzzle. My plan, to photograph small pieces at a time and put them together to create a portrait, soon seemed pointless in the face of the city’s infinite impulses that could not be contained in a manner of my liking. I couldn’t see everything and be everywhere. I realised that to suggest some kind of truth, it wouldn’t matter particularly where I was, but I’d have to let the place speak through me rather than trying to assign co-ordinates to a piece of puzzle. Of course the uncomfortable question then arose: who was I in this city, in this landscape?

It was this shift or realisation, or sensation, that links the work then to the pictures I took in the city in 2013, setting me off on a journey to make landscapes that would attempt, as far as possible, to be without pointed judgment, on the grounds that my judgment or preconceptions of a landscape, of a mountain or a skyscraper, say, are irrelevant in the face of its immutability. The process of finding an answer would call for making pictures that are more like windows than mirrors or pale reflections. A window’s neutrality and its equitability would suggest intangible context; where the frame is no longer a tyranny, where it is an invitation to explore rather than state a claim. The frame cannot escape the question about what it can’t see and can’t know, but perhaps there’s a place where the question simply ceases to arise.

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