A new city is being forged in Johannesburg. Regeneration projects such as the Nelson Mandela Bridge and the Newtown Precinct have made an impact on the landscape of the inner city. But, at the same time, yesteryear’s prime areas of Doornfontein, Berea, Hillbrow and Joubert Park are ghettos.
The city’s oldest blocks of flats can be found in Joubert Park. For his book Jo’burg (Filigranes Éditions/STE Publishers), photographer Guy Tillim spent several months documenting life in this area. He rented a flat on Plein Street and moved into a place where most white people only end up if they get lost while driving through the city. The former white residents moved out of the area in the 1990s and the demise of the Group Areas Act saw a flood of people looking for better lives move in.
Tillim believes that these are areas of potential success for the state and the city; support could be provided for the poor by subsidising private ownership of these buildings. During his stay, he says, he often got the feeling that many would go without food to pay their rent. Many are desperately poor, but there are also many who can and are willing to pay for their accommodation.
Living in the city, close to their employment, is the only option for these people. They cannot afford to move to outlying areas. But life is hard here. In buildings with little or no control, replacing a broken windowpane can be the cause of great consternation — and layers of uncertainty and distrust mean that the buildings are falling apart.
“Jo’burg’s a happening place,” says Tillim of his interest in this particular project. “It’s hard to avoid. I’ve been fascinated with it for the last 10 years.”
Winning the DaimlerChrysler Award for Photography facilitated the project. Tillim moved into Joubert Park, met Thulani Magome through a tenants’ rights group and asked if he would help him and show him around.
Magome knows the city. He guided Tillim around and Tillim told tenants and the controlling bodies of the various blocks in town what he wanted to do. The response was varied, with many dead ends, and he was often turned away. Some accepted his motives, others wanted an opinion of their lot. It took time and it took patience. His approach was low-key. He used a camera on a tripod, with a bit of distance, in gloomy enclaves and, at times, over a shared quart of beer, which resulted in this gently photographed essay of living on the edge in the city.
This may be regarded as intrusive by some but, as Tillim says: “Considering the hardships these people suffer, a wandering photographer is a benign interloper.”
The colours are muted but not without impact. For Tillim, such colours are closer to the truth than the colour we are used to viewing in many publications. These are photographs of the ordinary; he purposefully avoided waiting for iconic moments.
“I avoided the obvious way of looking at people living in reduced standards and poverty. I tried to avoid bringing traditional photojournalism into play and let the environment speak for itself,” says Tillim, who has previously worked in war zones in Africa and is already acclaimed for his work in that area.
The Jo’burg photographs at times appear simple, but the issues and solutions are not. The book is modestly sized, but unusual in form: the images are spread over a long fold-out concertina sheet. What little text there is, is at the back, with thumbnails and captions. It opens with a view of a darkly clouded skyline, looking towards Hillbrow, showing rooftops and the facades of buildings, then ventures inside to show that there are indeed people living there. Living in the most dire conditions, but allowing Tillim in to view and record.
His stay in Joubert Park was largely uneventful; he found the area safer than in the mid-1990s. Many of the blocks, his own included, have good security. “There were a couple of scary moments,” he says, “but nothing to write home about.”
Tillim’s approach to his subjects and their acceptance of him is evident, with pictures showing people in bed, their hopes, dreams and memories pasted erratically on the walls. Shebeen scenes, a card game, nothing raucous, just ordinary people waiting for a bit of certainty in life.
There are interiors reminiscent of American photographer William Eggelston’s work, and then there are the infamous Red Ants: the red in the photographs is strong and is an underlying theme in the book. Tillim feels strongly about these evictions: “Good luck to Corner House, Urban Ocean and the inner city loft developments, but you can’t just hoof people out a few blocks down.” His quietly spoken ways belie how strongly he feels about this.
His aim was not to try and do a portrait of the city, but to narrow the focus, and this he has done without resorting to visual hysterics. “The visual vocabulary has been expanded,” he says. “We have become more articulate as image-makers and, at the same time, viewers have also become more articulate.” He has already received the Oskar Barnack Award for 2005, for this work, in France earlier this year.
Tillim is not the only one to look towards the inner city and come out with a book. Artists Terry Kurgan and Jo Ractliffe have produced and published Johannesburg Circa Now, an extension of their collaborative project at the Johannesburg Art Gallery last year. It is dedicated to their late friend and colleague Andrew Meintjies.
The book is made up of a collection of essays, both written and photographed. Ractliffe’s images are dreamlike, panoramic, overlapped exposures, where the whole film produces one image of various parts of the city. They are like an alien’s view from within a box while passing through Newtown or standing on a mine dump.
Photographs of photographers and the reaction to photographs by writers expand one’s understanding of how photography works in the city. There are accompanying photo-essays about aspects of Johannesburg; some images are aesthetically weighted, others are plainly naive, but all are linked to the city in some way. The book shows another aspect to the lives of those documented by Tillim.
The book concludes in an upbeat fashion with self-portraits by visitors to the Johannesburg Art Gallery “doing an action” in a studio set up as part of the exhibition. These were printed, handwritten captions added and then displayed as part of the exhibit. They are simple portraits with a happy, contrived feel, full of hope and attitude. In years to come, perhaps these “cards” will take on the same air of quaint mystery as the black-and-white snapshots of one Helen Shein and her parents, on their garden path in suburban Johannesburg, 50 or 60 years ago.
Photographer’s note: Guy Tillim
White residents fled Johannesburg’s inner city in the 1990s. The removal of the Group Areas Act foreshadowed a flow into the city of black residents and owners of small businesses seeking opportunities and better lives. Former denizens looked back in self-righteous justification at a city that was given over to plunder and mayhem. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy, backed by eyewitness reports and statistics. Everyone had their own horror stories.
In amongst this turmoil stood the tower blocks, occupied by tenants who were holding on to occupancy and managing the buildings in ways of their own devising. Their story had gone something like this: in the 1990s the owners absconded, leaving managing agents to retrieve what rents they could. In most cases, these agents were corrupt, did not pay utilities and disappeared with the money. These were tidy sums, handed over by poor people who conscientiously paid up to avoid having to go back to where they came from.
Body corporates became relics of a more genteel era; the communal responsibilities that are contentious in even the most well-heeled blocks were not marked out. Windows were broken and not repaired. Lifts froze and their shafts became tips.
The relationship between tenants and owners or their agents deteriorated with disputes over the state of the buildings and unpaid rents and dues. The buildings started looking like fire hazards, and the city council started closing on them for unpaid utilities.
The tenants have constituted committees to face threats and have, with meagre resources, attempted to clean up the buildings. But they have merely delayed the inevitable. Their committees have no basis in law and so are vulnerable to investment capital and legal manoeuvres that have invoked statutes and non-compliances carrying the penalty of eviction.
In between the needs of the city council and the aspirations of developers anticipating the bloom of an African city lies the fate of Jo’burg’s residents. The outcome will decide whether or not Johannesburg becomes, again, a city of exclusion.
The details
Guy Tillim’s photographs are on exhibition at The Point Gallery at The Drill Hall, corner Twist and Plein streets, Jo’burg, until November 17. Tel: (011) 333 1112
Johannesburg Circa Now, by Terry Kurgan and Jo Ractliffe, is available from Warren Siebrits Modern and Contemporary Art. Tel: (011) 327 0000. Ractliffe’s Collected Colour Works: 1999 to 2005 is showing at Siebrits until November 10