The Easel

28th May 2019

Framing Time: Guy Tillim’s African Street Photography

African photography is getting more attention, most recently in Paris. Tillim, perhaps Africa’s foremost contemporary photographer, has worked mostly in the post-apartheid era. Weary of images of war or famine that remove “a human drama from its context”, he now focuses on cityscapes. His images convey a sense of “peace … dynamism, yet uncertainty”. Images are here.

21st May 2019

Our Full Attention

Winning the Deutsche Börse prize confirms Susan Meiselas as a great documentary photographer. She is well aware that her images of war raise ethical issues. Are they a “monument to the victims of war” or exploiting those victims’ suffering? This writer opts for the positive: “to look is to familiarise oneself with an ‘other’, that to familiarise is to empathise.”