Guy Tillim, South Africa
Daimler Award for South African 2004
Mercedes-Benz Museum
Stuttgart Untertürkheim
May 7 - May 9, 2004Daimler Contemporary
June 17 - August 22, 2004
Introduction
The 2004 Daimler Award for South African Photography goes to photographer Guy Tillim for his sensitive and critical photographs, covering different genre as portrait photography, photos of trouble spots in Africa and urban landscapes.
In addition to working as a freelance creative photographer, the 41-year-old has been illustrating reports for national and international media since 1986.With this distinction for Tillim, the Daimler Award confirms its assignment of serving as a forum for committed aesthetic positions. The award derives its significance from the fact that a major exhibition will be staged and a comprehensive catalogue produced.
Kunhinga, Angola
February 2002
According to the jury Tillim delves much deeper into the realm of conventional war photography. "He has a creative and poetic voice. Even though he works in a familiar tradition, his images are open to broader interpretation. They do not only reveal an elaborated consciousness of technique such as the use of black and white or colour, and light, but an intimacy that brings the viewer closer to the subject. Tillim's work has a sense of tension, an edge, and his continuous searching and exploration marks him as an exceptional photographer," stated the jury.
Luanda, Angola November 2001
Kunhinga, Angola , February 2002
Explaining the body of work at the Daimlerexhibition, Tillim says: "Conflict in Africa in the last decades has been played out on a colonial stage. The set is changing as the power shifts from colonial to post-colonial and modern society. The reasons for the conflicts are complex, and the motives that fuel individual groups in civil wars are difficult to unravel. Broken and twisted landscapes stand as a record of the carnage that these wars have wrought. At the same time many places not destroyed are adapted, reused, and are in transition. They will endure, and the scars they carried can be recorded."
Democratic Republic of Congo
Dec 2002 - Jan 2003
Guy Tillim was born in Johannesburg in 1962. In 1985 he graduated in economics from Cape Town University and started working as a photographer. Today, Tillim ranks among the most interesting photographic artists in South Africa. His oeuvre comprises portraits, photo documentaries of political hot spots in Africa and photographic urban research. Alongside his freelance work as a photographic artist, the 41-year-old has also been working as a photographer for national and international media since 1986.
Guy Tillim's photographs were shown in national and international exhibitions of South African art, among other things twice in Berlin, in the exhibition "Schwarz Weiß" ('Black and White') at Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst in 1991, and in "Colours. Kunst aus Südafrika" ('Colours. Art from South Africa') at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in 1996. In 1990, the South African National Gallery in Cape Town commissioned the artist to shoot a photo series about Transkei; in 2001 the gallery - the most important museum for contemporary art in South Africa - presented his photo series about Kuito, Angola, in a one-man show which subsequently moved to Paris in conjunction with the Prix SCAM awarded to Tillim. One-man shows at the galleries Michael Stevenson Contemporary (Kunhinga Portraits) and Brendan Bell-Roberts (Departure) in Cape Town represented the breakthrough for Guy Tillim's artistic work in 2003.