David Goldblatt

David Goldblatt. Photo courtesy african success.org

For more than 50 years David Goldblatt has produced stirring, detailed photographs of South African people and their surroundings. He was born in Randfontein on the West Rand of Johannesburg, on November 29, 1930. His parents were Lithuanian immigrants who had left Europe in the late 19^th century because of Jewish persecution. Goldblatt began taking photographs in 1948, the same year the South African government began institutionalising its apartheid policies. He developed a specific interest in documenting life under the apartheid regime and, after receiving a BCom degree from the University of the Witwatersrand, he left his father's mens' outfitter business for full-time photography.

Goldblatt fast gained acclaim as a documentary photographer, and aimed, in particular, to use his photographs as documentation of the lives and struggles of South Africans. For example, under the Land Act, black South Africans were not allowed to live in certain areas designated for whites. These “homelands” resulted in a depleted labour force in the cities, and so black South Africans had to travel to the “white” areas every day for work. Between 1983 and 1984, Goldblatt documented many such workers as they travelled from the homeland KwaNdebele to Pretoria. This comment on migrant labour was called The Transported of KwaNdebele: A South African Odyssey, and is typical of Goldblatt’s use of images to express hardship and social injustice.

With the fall of apartheid, Godblatt realised that his primary focus had always been on the values that people share and that underlie their lives. In the context of a unified South Africa he has continued to tell stories about ordinary men and women, steering away from broader, media-dominated issues. One such example is his award-winning book Particulars, which displays images of the hands, feet, legs and other parts of ordinary people across the country, allowing the viewer to draw conclusions about each individual’s demographic profile.

During his career Goldblatt has had an intriguing relationship with his home town, Johannesburg, having documented the many perspectives of the City of Gold. He took artistic inspiration from the city (albeit from an often dark and troubled outlook), founded the Market Photography Workshop in Newtown, and has consistently been the focus of exhibitions at the city’s finest institutions, such as the Goodman Gallery and the Michael Stevenson Gallery.

In 2010 Goldblatt released TJ: Some things old, some things new, some much the same, a photographic exploration of the many aspects of Johannesburg that have not changed since democratisation.  

Goldblatt has had a career of astounding success, and his exhibitions have been an almost permanent feature in galleries around the world. He has accumulated an impressive list of awards and honours, including the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Lucie Foundation, the Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography, and honorary doctorates from the University of the Witwatersrand and the University of Cape Town.

He lives with his family in Johannesburg.