Guy Tillim

Roma, Città di mezzo

 

Guy Tillim seeks a non-monumental Rome, a continuation of his previous project, Avenue Patrice Lumumba, which arrives here with him. Africa is a gargantuan concept, as Ryszard Kapuscinsky mentioned in a conversation when he participated in the first edition of FOTOGRAFIA International Festival of Rome, and Africa is in Tillim’s mind and eyes as he embarks on this first project away from Africa. Tillim seeks the middle city, the middle light (the rainiest winter in years is a privilege for him); he seeks an idea born out in his extended watching of neo realist cinema, which he re-elaborates in the field. In this middle city, the most complex thing is scale: how near, how far? Much lies in this strong tension of the quest for scale in the middle city, a city where Tillim is alone, free to think, to approach and to move away.
Marco Delogu

 

Guy Tillim was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1962. He has received many awards for his work, including the 2005 Leica Oskar Barnack Award for his “Joburg” series documenting the life of Johannesburg’s inner city residents. He has had numerous exhibitions of his work, which has also been featured in several shows focusing on African art and photography, most recently at The Photographers’ Gallery, London, in August 2005; the International Center of Photography, New York, in March 2006; and Documenta 12, Kassel, in 2007 “Petros Village” was exhibited at the Museo di Roma in Trastevere during the 2006 edition of FOTOGRAFIA international festival in Rome. In 2006 Tillim has been awarded the first Robert Gardner Fellowship in Photography by the Peabody Museum at Harvard University. His series Avenue Patrice Lumumba has shown at the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris and at FOAM_Fotografiemuseum in Amsterdam. In 2009 he has been invited by the Rome Commission to portray the city of Rome and realised the project and the book Roma città di mezzo. In 2011 the project Petros Village was part of the exhibition about contemporary south african photographers “Figures and Fictions” at the V&A museum in London.