Notes

David Goldblatt, South Africa’s most distinguished photographer, has exhibited extensively abroad and won numerous international awards. In 2006 he was awarded the Hasselblad Photography Award, considered the world’s most prestigious award for photography and described by some as “the Nobel prize of the arts” and, in 2009, he received the prestigious Henri Cartier-Bresson Award for his project ‘TJ’, an ongoing examination of the city of Johannesburg.

Between 1979 and 1980 Goldblatt turned his lens on the particularities of small town, middle class, white communities in reef towns of which he found Boksburg to be most emblematic. Much of this photograph’s captivating appeal resides in the couple’s unselfconscious absorption in the dance while the photographer’s keen eye observes every detail. Unlike in some of his earlier photographs which Goldblatt has called ‘encounter portraits’, in the Boksburg photographs “he tried to minimise his presence in the pictures by nearly always using a ‘normal’ lens, avoiding dramatic printing techniques, and ensuring that the people he photographed were not obviously aware of him and his camera”.ⁱ

The body of photographs, entitled In Boksburg, was the first to be published in the South African Photographic Gallery Series by Paul Alberts, who likened the work to James Joyce’s Ulysses – far ahead of its time.ⁱⁱ

Significantly, this is one of Goldblatt’s rare, early silver gelatine hand prints of which none are commercially available. In addition, it has been selenium-toned, which deepens the contrasts and prolongs the life of the print, giving it archival quality.

Goldblatt is represented in Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town; Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; The French National Art Collection; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands, Fotomuseum, Winterthur, Switzerland; Hasselblad Collection, Sweden; Museum Kunst Palast, Düsseldorf, Germany; Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna, Austria and the National Gallery of Canada, amongst others.

i. Rory Bester, ‘David Goldblatt: One Book at a Time’ in David Goldblatt: Photographs, Contrasto, Rome, 2006, p15.
ii. Ibid. P 16.
 

Exhibited

David Goldblatt: Fifty-one Years, AXA Gallery, New York (2001); Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (2002); Palais de Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles, Brussels (2002)

David Goldblatt: Photographs, Recontres internationales de la Photographie, Arles (2006); Fotomuseum, Wintertur (2007); Forma - Centro Internationale di Fotografia (2007)

David Goldblatt: Kith, Kin and Kaya - South African Photographs, The Jewish Museum, New York (2010); The South African Jewish Museum, Cape Town, (2010-2011)

Literature

David Goldblatt: Fifty-one Years, Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), Barcelona, 2001, p 255, illustrated.

David Goldblatt: Photographs, Contrasto, Rome, 2006, p 91, illustrated.

David Goldblatt: Kith, Kin and Kaya - South African Photographs, Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, 2010, p 113, illustrated.