David Goldblatt

David Goldblatt (born 29 November 1930 in Randfontein, Gauteng Province) is a South African photographer noted for his portrayal of South Africa during the period of apartheid and more recently that country's landscapes. He has described himself as a “self-appointed observer and critic of the society into which I was born.” He has numerous publications to his name and is held in high esteem, both locally and internationally. He lives in Johannesburg.

David Goldblatt is the youngest of the three sons of Eli and Olga Goldblatt. His grandparents arrived in South Africa from Lithuania around 1893, having fled the persecution of Jews in the Baltic countries.

Goldblatt worked in his father's men's outfitters, attended Krugersdorp High School, and graduated from the University of the Witwatersrand with a degree in commerce.

Goldblatt began photographing in 1948 and has documented developments in South Africa through the period of apartheid to the present. In Goldblatt's view color photography seemed too sweet a medium in the Apartheid years to express the loathing that it inspired in him. He documented the dreadfully extensive and uncomfortable twice-daily bus trips of black workers who lived in the segregated "homelands" north east of Pretoria in his work The Transported of KwaNdebele. According to Goldblatt, the conditions of South Africa have not changed that much for poor people since apartheid. He also states, "It will take generations to undo the consequences of Apartheid." He continues to photographs of the area including the landscape.

Until the end of the 1990s Goldblatt – in what he calls his personal work – rarely photographed in colour. 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 color," 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. The result is a blend of Goldblatt’s expertise in the field of classic large-format photography combined with the latest techniques offered by high-end scanners and advanced ink-jet papers, producing images redolent of South Africa’s light and land.

...
Wikipedia