archival pigment ink on 308gm Hahnemühle PhotoRag

Artwork date: circa 1994-2003, printed later
Signature details: signed and inscribed pp in pencil along the bottom margin

(40)

sheet size: 42 x 59.6 cm each, 1 framed, 39 unframed

Notes:

Tillim wrote the following introduction to his 2003 book Departure[i], which was prefaced by the words of French poet Arthur Rimbaud: Including: Guyana, 1997; Kabul Zoo, Afghanistan, 1995; Dust storm, Kuito, Angola, 2000; Unity day celebrations, Bujumbura, Burundi, 2002; Fans arrive for UN personnel during the UN-sponsored election, Quelimane, Mozambique, 1994; A boy holds up his schoolbook, covered with a photograph of Dutch soccer player, at the mission school in Kornieliuskondre, (former Dutch colony of Suriname), 1997; Don Bosco, centre for abandoned children, Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo, 2002; Kuito, Angola, 2000; A boy climbs through a hole in the roof of the former Education Administration building, Kuito, Angola, 2000; Late UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi's former residence, inhabited by displaced people, Kuito, Angola, 2000; Revolutionary United Front soldier, Koidu, Sierra Leone, June 2000; A civilian takes cover from a Taliban artillery bombardment, Kabul, Afghanistan 1995; Ethiopian dead, after a battle near Adi-Quala, Eritrea, Eritrea/Ethiopia war, May 2000; Civil Defence Force militia (Kamajoors) near Koidu, Sierra Leone, 2001; Goma residents salute Laurent Kabila in Democratic Republic of Congo (then Zaire) after his rebel army's capture of the town from the Mobutu government, 1997; MPLA (Movement Popular de Liberation de Angola) army helicopter, Kuito, Angola, 2000; World Food Program grain stores, Kuito, Angola, 2000; Bella Vista, Luanda, Angola, 2001; Luanda, Angola, 2001; Displaced people in a shelter they have built near Keren, Eritrea, during the Eritrea/Ethiopia war, May 2000; On the road between Mazar-i-Sharif and Kabul, Afghanistan, 1996; Former Bishop of Kuito's residence, inhabited by displaced people, Kuito, Angola, 2000; The evening television news during the Eritrea / Ethiopia war, on the rooftop of the Keren Hotel, Eritrea, May 2000; Mai-mai militia camp near Ben, Democratic Republic of Congo, 2002; Ancient graves, Mount of Olives, Jerusalem, 2001; An amputee's grave, Kuito, Angola, 2000; Asylum for psychiatric patients, Luanda, Angola, 1994; Logging, Guyana, 1997; Tete, Mozambique, 2002; Luanda, Angola, 2001; NGO party, Kuito, Angola; Traders, having boarded a Congo River steamer, the Colonel Kokolo, on its way to Kinshasa from Kisangani, jump off the bridge to join their colleagues for the paddle back upstream to their villages, Congo, (then Zaire), 1996; Springlands, Guyana, 1997; Children bathe in the Coppername River, Guyana, 1997; Near Matatiele, South Africa, 1990; Queens Mercy, South Africa, 1991; Queens Mercy, South Africa, 1988; Weimaraner puppies in training for demining operations Ambriz, Angola, 2000; The active volcano, Mt Nyiragongo, and the devastation caused by the eruption in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo, 2002 , from an edition of 12

Departure

Enough seen.

The vision was encountered under all skies.

Enough had.

Noises of cities, in the evening, and in the sunshine, and always.

Enough known.

The pauses of life--O sounds and visions!

Departure into a new affection and new noise!

Arthur Rimbaud, Les Illuminations

“These moments are elusive, alluring for being so. My brand of idealism that had its roots in the time I started photographing in South Africa during the apartheid years of the 1980s has dimmed. There was right and wrong, it seemed clear to me which side I stood. One would forego, what I might now call subtlety, for the sake of making a statement about injustice. The world’s press set the tone and timbre of the reportage it would receive, and I for one was bought by it. Perhaps that is why I now look for ways to glimpse other worlds which I attempt to enter for a while. But one cannot live them all, and usually I am left with a keen sense of my own dislocation.Of course, there is always this: to change what is ugly and brutal into something sublime and redemptive. So I have photographs I like for reasons I have come to distrust.I learned my trade as a photojournalist but feelings of impotence in the face of others’ despair led me to look away, as if catching only obliquely their reflected light. These are photographs of disparate locations, but their justification for ending up in one collection, their basis for comparison, is of another nature: disquiet, introspection, wonder.”

Guy Tillim

Sources:

[i] Tillim, G. (2003) Departure. Cape Town: Michael Stevenson Contemporary & Bell-Roberts Publishing. n.p.