David Goldblatt / On the Mines / 2012
To celebrate the publication of On the Mines, a new edition of the acclaimed 1973 book by David Goldblatt, Goodman Gallery Johannesburg is to exhibit a selection of works from the book, and is pleased to host the South African launch of the new version published by Steidl of Germany, noted publisher of books on fine art and photography. Now in an expanded and redesigned version, the volume is true to the format of the first issue, featuring the original essay by Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer, and with the images divided into three chapters, namely The Witwatersrand: a Time and Tailings, Shaftsinking, and Mining Men. Gordimer has added a postscript to her essay, and the book is extensively updated “to expand the view but not to alter the sense of things,” says Goldblatt. The photographer has now added a text of his own in which he reflects on his childhood in Randfontein, as well as the 1973 publication. Goldblatt and Gordimer collaborated to examine the human and political dimensions of mining in South Africa, and the photographs which are the basis of the book cover a period from the mid-sixties onward. There are now thirty one new, previously unpublished, photographs, including colour images, while eleven pictures from the first edition have been removed. This is to be the first of a planned series of collaborations between David Goldblatt and Steidl to publish both reprints and new books on his work. The exhibition and book launch are of particular significance at this time in the history of South Africa and its mines. The photographer will be present at the opening of the exhibition, to take part in a public conversation on his work with writer Sean O’Toole, and to sign copies of the new book. David Goldblatt was born in 1930 in Randfontein, South Africa and since the early 1960s has devoted all of his time to photography. In 1989 Goldblatt founded the Market Photography Workshop in Johannesburg, with, he explains “the object of teaching visual literacy and photographic skills to young people, with particular emphasis on those disadvantaged by apartheid”. In 1998 he was the first South African to be given a one-person exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York. Goldblatt received an Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts at the University of Cape Town in 2001. In that same year a retrospective exhibition, David Goldblatt: Fifty-One Years, opened in Barcelona, and later travelled to galleries and museums around the world, in New York, Rotterdam, Lisbon, Oxford, Brussels, Munich and Johannesburg. His work was represented at Documenta 11 (2002) and Documenta 12 (2007) in Kassel, Germany. Goldblatt received an Honorary Doctorate of Literature from the University of the Witwatersrand in 2008. Recent solo exhibitions include those at Marian Goodman Gallery Paris, Goodman Gallery Cape Town and Galeria Elba Benitez in Madrid. His work is currently featured on the exhibition Everything Was Moving: Photography from the 60s and 70s, at the Barbican in London. Goldblatt’s photographs are in the collections of the South African National Gallery, Cape Town; the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; and MoMA New York, among many other prestigious museums. Goldblatt is the recipient of the 2006 Hasselblad Award and the 2009 Henri Cartier-Bresson Award, was recently named the 2010 Lucie Award Lifetime Achievement Honoree, and in 2011 received an Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from the San Francisco Art Institute. For further information on the exhibition and new publication, kindly contact the gallery.
Artworks
About
David Goldblatt
David Goldblatt (1930 – 2018) was born in Randfontein, a small mining town outside of Johannesburg, South Africa. Through his lens, South African he chronicled the structures, people and landscapes of South Africa from 1948 until his death in June 2018. Well known for his photography which explored both public and private life in South Africa, Goldblatt created a body of powerful images which depicted life during the time of Apartheid. Goldblatt also extensively photographed colonial era monuments and buildings with the idea that the architecture reveals something about the people who built them.
In particular, Goldblatt documented the people, landscapes and industry of the Witwatersrand, the resource-rich area in which he grew up and lived, where the local economy was based chiefly on mining. Equal parts artist and documentarian, Goldblatt was known for his practice of attaching extensive captions to his photographs, which almost always identify the subject, place, and time in which the image was taken. These titles often play a vital role in exposing the visible and invisible forces through which the country’s policies of extreme racism and segregation shaped the dynamics of life, especially along axes of gender, labor, identity, and freedom of movement. Beyond endowing his images with documentary power, Goldblatt’s titles also dignify the people and places he photographs.
In 1989, Goldblatt founded the Market Photography Workshop, a training institution in Johannesburg, for aspiring photographers. In 1998 he was the first South African to have a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The Goldblatt Archive is held by Yale University, in New Haven, Connecticut.
In 2001, a retrospective of his work, ‘David Goldblatt Fifty-One Years’ began a tour of galleries and museums. He was one of the few South African artists to exhibit at Documenta 11 (2002) and Documenta 12 (2007) in Kassel, Germany. A more recent retrospective includes, ‘David Goldblatt: No Ulterior Motive at the AIC’ (2018), which is now touring. This major traveling retrospective exhibition spans the seven decades of this South African photographer’s career, from the 1950s to the 2010s, demonstrating Goldblatt’s commitment to showing the realities of daily life in his country. The exhibition and accompanying publication bring together roughly 150 works by Goldblatt from the collections of the Yale University Art Gallery and the Art Institute of Chicago—two major Goldblatt repositories—including his early black-and-white photography and his post-apartheid, large-format color photography.
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.
Other 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); Everything Was Moving: Photography from the 60s and 70s, Barbican Centre, London (2012). He also exhibited at the Jewish Museum (2010); and the New Museum (2009), both in New York.
Selected key collections include: Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA); 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; The Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Huis Marseille, Museum for Photography, Amsterdam; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City; 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; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Museum Folkwang, Essen; Musée de l’Élysée, Lausanne; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles.
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