 A member of the country's white minority, Tillim was born in Johannesburg in 1962.He first became professionally involved in photography as a photojournalist in 1986, working with the Afrapix collective, a group of South African documentary photographers providing a unique conduit of photography to world media during apartheid.During much of this time he worked as a freelance photographer for both local and foreign media, including Reuters (1986 to 1988) and Agence France Press (1993 to 1994).