David
Goldblatt

“The camera is a strange instrument. It demands, first of all, that you see coherently. It makes it possible for you to enter into worlds, and places, and associations that would otherwise be very difficult to do.”

David Goldblatt

Saturday morning at the corner of Commissioner and Trichardt Streets, Boksburg , 1979

David Goldblatt

Couple in the Library Gardens, Johannesburg , 1948

David Goldblatt

A miner waits on the bank to go underground, City Deep Gold Mine , 1966

David Goldblatt

Playground, Chiawelo, Soweto. September, 1972

David Goldblatt

A cairn, possibly a grave, Leeuwenvalley, Moordenaar’s Karoo, Western Cape. 24 April 2002 , 2002

David Goldblatt

Farmer's sign for Gate (Hek). Near Rammetjieskraal, between Lainsburg and Prince Albert, Western Cape. 28 May 2004 , 2004

David Goldblatt

The founders of Buffelsjagbaai, a small village on the Southern Cape Atlantic coast, Johannes and Sophia Swam, came there in the 1920s. Shipwrecks and driftwood provided planks from which they built a house and a boat. Scarcity of water was a problem and there were few roads. But in time the community grew. The women would walk to surrounding villages to sell fish which they carried on poles and to buy provisions. Between March and May when the geelbek were running, people would come on donkey carts to buy their catches. Under apartheid the community lacked permanent rights of residence. Today they have electricity, water and security of tenure. They harvest kelp but the fish and the perlemoen (abalone) on which they depend are in decline. 5 October 2005 , 2005

David Goldblatt

Windmills, Ventersburg, Free State. 6 August 2003 , 2003

David Goldblatt

Dancing-master Ted van Rensburg watches two of his ballroom pupils, swinging to a record of Victor Sylvester and his Orchestra, in the MOTHS' Hall at the old Court House, Boksburg, 1980

David Goldblatt

Woman smoking, Fordsburg, Johannesburg., 1975

David Goldblatt

Shop assistant, Orlando West, 1972

David Goldblatt

Dutch Reformed Church inaugurated on 31 July 1966, Op-die-Berg, Koue Bokkeveld. 23 May 1987 , 1987

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B. 1930, South Africa

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Artist Bio

David Goldblatt (1930 – 2018) was born in Randfontein, a small mining town outside of Johannesburg, South Africa. Described by writer Mark Gevisser as ‘the visual conscience of South Africa,’ he photographed the structures, people and landscapes of South Africa for over seven decades. His work is contained in a number of books, including Some Afrikaners Photographed, On the Mines, Intersections, The Transported of Kwandebele, In Boksburg, Structures of things then, Fragments of Fietas and Ex Offenders at the Scene of Crime. Describing his work, he said, “I was drawn not to the events of the time, but to the quiet and commonplace where nothing ‘happened’ and yet all was contained and imminent”.

Goldblatt’s work has been exhibited widely around the world. Key exhibitions include Structures of Dominion and Democracy (2018) at Centre Pompidou, Paris; No Ulterior Motive (2022- 2025), a collaboration between the Art Institute of Chicago, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven and Foundation Mafpre, Madrid; David Goldblatt: 51 years (2002 - 2004) organized by MACBA, Barcelona and exhibited at Witte de With, Rotterdam; Modern Art, Oxford; Palais des Beaux Arts, Brussels; Lenbachhaus, Munich, and the Bensusan Museum and Library of Photography, Johannesburg; Intersections Intersected (2008 -2011), organized by Stevenson Gallery and exhibited at Open eye Gallery, Liverpool, New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, Malmo Konsthall and the University Museum of Contemporary Art, Amherst. Museums where he has had solo shows include the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation, Paris; Huis Marseilles, Amsterdam; Serralves Foundation, Porto; the Norval Foundation, Cape Town; South African National Gallery, Cape Town and Johannesburg Art Gallery.

Notable group exhibitions and biennales include ILLUMInations at the 54th Venice Biennale in 2011, South Africa in Apartheid and After, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2013); and Everything Was Moving: Photography from the 60s and 70s, Barbican Centre, London (2012). York.

Galleries where he has exhibited include Pace and Howard Greenberg, New York; Marion Goodman, Paris, Galería Elba Benítez, Madrid and Stevenson, Cape Town. He has been represented by Goodman Gallery since 2000 and has held numerous exhibitions at its Johannesburg, London and Cape Town galleries.

Selected collections include: Museum of Modern Art, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Tate Modern, London; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; The J. Paul Getty; Museum, Los Angeles; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Art Institute of Chicago; Huis Marseille, Amsterdam; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; The Walther Collection, Neu-Ulm, Germany and New York; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven; Johannesburg Art Gallery, South Africa; Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton; Musée del’Élysée, Lausanne; Carnegie

Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid and Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles. Goldblatt was the recipient of the 2006 Hasselblad award, the 2009 Henri Cartier-Bresson Award, the 2013 ICP Infinity Award and in 2016, he was awarded the Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres by the Ministry of Culture of France.