Notes

David Goldblatt has become central to the history of photography in South Africa. His career as a photographer started in 1948 with his gritty images documenting the development of South Africa from the Aparheid years to present.

Until the end of the 1990s Goldblatt worked predominatly in black and white. It was only after working on a project involving blue asbestos in north-western Australia, and the resulting disease and death, that his interest in photographing in colour increased. "That’s when I got hooked on doing work in colour," he says. "You can’t make it blue in black and white." This was coupled with new developments in the field of digital scanning and printing. Only when Goldblatt was able to achieve the same "depth" in his colour work that he had previously achieved in his black-and-white photographs, did he choose to explore this field extensively.

In May 2013, Goldblatt received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 29th Annual Infinity Awards gala event in New York City.