A retrospective exhibition of works by South African documentary photographer, David Goldblatt, opens at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney this Friday.
David Goldblatt, Steven with bus, Doornfontein, Johannesburg, 1960, silver gelatin photograph on fibre-based paper, image courtesy Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg and Cape Town © The David Goldblatt Legacy Trust.
Capturing seven decades of his work, David Goldblatt: Photographs 1948–2018 covers a turbulent period of South Africa’s history that takes in the rise and dismantling of Apartheid. The grandson of Lithuanian-Jewish migrants, who left Europe for South Africa in the 1890s to escape religious persecution, Goldblatt was born in Randfontein in 1930 and lived and worked in Johannesburg. He took his first black-and-white photographs in 1948, and, following the death of his father in 1962, sold the family clothing business and turned full-time to photography.
This exhibition was curated by MCA Chief Curator Rachel Kent in close collaboration with the artist before his passing. It includes photographs covering South Africa’s mining industry, the white middle class, forced segregation of black and Asian communities into townships under the Group Areas Act, and stories of the country’s ex-offenders and their crimes. It will only be seen in Sydney.
One series of images resulted in a major photographic book, On the Mines, which was published in 1973 and included an essay by the renowned author Nadine Gordimer. Goldblatt continued to document South Africa’s mining industry into the 1990s. During this period he also travelled to Western Australia to document the legacy of blue asbestos mining in Australia. This link between mining histories and their legacy is an important aspect of the MCA Australia exhibition.
The exhibition runs until 3 March 2019. Click here for more information.
