Guy Tillim

Guy Tillim
Grande Hotel, Beira, Mozambique, 2008
(Courtesy of Michael Stevenson, Cape Town)

Given my interest in historical, architectural, ethnographic, and anthropological photography, I was curious to explore this collaborative exhibition between Guy Tillim and Extra City. I find myself drawn to stories of colonization and its intended and unintended after effects, perhaps because I spent my most formative years in Africa? Or, perhaps, because members of my family spent formative years 'settling' in the Texas, New Mexico, Colorado?

[An aside: The Cator brothers started ranching on the Palo Duro in 1878. They built a house and started a store they called the Zulu Stockade, because they considered their territory as wild as the Zululand in Africa. Interesting.]

Guy Tillim: Avenue Patrice Lumumba
06/09 - 25/10/2009

Extra City – Kunsthal Antwerpen
Tulpstraat 79 –
2060 Antwerp – Belgium
info@extracity.org



"Extra City presents the project Avenue Patrice Lumumba by Guy Tillim in collaboration with the Flemish-Dutch House deBuren a few months before the 50th anniversary of Congolese independence from Belgium.

Avenue Patrice Lumumba is an examination of modern history in Africa against the backdrop of its colonial and post-colonial architectural heritage. It travels through numerous African countries, including Mozambique, Angola and The Democratic Republic of Congo.

In this project, the South African photographer Guy Tillim (1962, Johannesburg) departs from the late-modernist architectural structures that shaped the colonial landscape of conflicts in recent decades. However, the transitional and hybrid sceneries and spaces he depicts do not merely testify to conflict and an oppressive past, decay and violently contested ideologies. They speak equally of the aspirations for liberation and progress in the post-colonial era."

p.s. p.s. Lighting notes: indoors; quality/color = perhaps, existing natural light plus additional source; source/direction = appears to be front lit, eliminating shadows.