(Author: Frank Startz, Vol. 67, No. 2, Rosh Hashanah 2012)
David Goldblatt has spent much of his life as a photographer recording and chronicling many aspects of South African history as it unfolded, especially but not exclusively during the apartheid years. His objectivity, honesty and passion as an observer have been unswerving, his work has attained major recognition in several countries and, as the Appendix shows, has been recognised via numerous awards. Without doubt, he is one of this country’s accomplished and influential sons. Yet he remains humble and totally unaffected by this mountainous public acclaim.
I met with David earlier this year in order to gain some personal and biographical insight preparatory to writing this piece. I had known him for many years but found that my knowledge of him was embarrassingly scant. I came away from our discussions refreshed by both his candour and his humility.
When I remarked that his professional biography might be too extensive to be included in this article, he furnished me with the following, abridged version:
I was born in Randfontein in 1930, the third son of Eli and Olga Goldblatt who came to South Africa as children with their parents to escape conditions in Eastern Europe.
After matriculating at Krugersdorp High in 1948, I attempted to become a magazine photographer, a field then almost unknown in South Africa. I failed and went to work for my father, who had established a men’s outfitting store in Randfontein. While working in the shop, I took a B Comm. degree at the University of the Witwatersrand and maintained my interest in photography.
My father died in 1962. I sold the business in 1963 and decided to become a photographer. Gradually I built up a professional practice, mainly in the field of photo journalism, specialising in work outside the studio photographing for magazines, corporations, advertising agencies and institutions.
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row] “Zulu women salvaging bricks for a white contractor from Indians’houses demolished under the Group Areas Act, Fietas, 3 June 1982” (David Goldblatt Fifty-One Years, Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, 2001, p226) Recognizing the need for a facility to teach visual literacy and photographic skills, particularly to people disadvantaged by apartheid, I founded the Market Photo Workshop in 1989. I regard myself as an unlicensed, self-appointed observer and critic of South African society which I continue to explore with the camera. I live in Johannesburg with Lily my wife. Our children are Steven, Brenda and Ron. Our grandchildren are Daniel and Samuel. On 29 March 2011, David was informed that the government was going to award him the Order of Ikhamanga – Silver. He responded by informing them that he would regretfully have to decline the honour in protest over the Protection of State Information Bill (passed in Parliament on ‘Black Tuesday’, 23 November). This, he said, sought to muzzle the press and was in direct conflict with spirit of our democracy and, importantly, the spirit of the award. David’s work has appeared in 24 books published internationally – mainly solo publications but also with other participants. It is represented in 17 museum and institutional collections. A solo exhibition of his work was held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in 1998, to mention but one of many such exhibitions. In all he has participated in 66 one man exhibitions internationally as well as 35 selected group exhibitions. He has also received 10 major photographic honours. FS: How did your association with the Market Gallery come about? DG: Barney Simon and Mannie Manim started the Market Theatre in 1977 and we were all involved with the project. My kids went there to sandpaper the woodwork. Everyone pitched in. I was on the periphery and then got a call from Carol Hacker. She said that she would like to start a photographic gallery. I’d never met her, but she sounded very genuine. So I spoke to Mannie and Barney and they gave the go-ahead so long as I was going to be involved with it. So I officially became Carol’s advisor and we ran the Gallery for several years. We worked very hard. It was quite effective – we had an exhibition every three weeks. Despite this success, the usual nonsense started with the Market Theatre Foundation. Money and so on. FS: Tell us about your association with the Market Art Gallery people, namely Wolf Weinek, Paul Stopforth and Mike Goldberg and how this tied in with the Market Foundation. DG: We had very good relations with them. I need to tell you a little about that. The Art Gallery came about a short while after we started. Wolf Weinek came up with the brilliant idea of a flea market that raised funds for the two galleries. They (The Market Theatre Foundation) were going to give us 10% from the Flea Market takings. The Flea Market was so successful that it actually saved the whole Market Foundation. And then – I don’t remember the whole sequence of events, but I think I became chairman of the whole thing. I then got hold of Graeme Lindopp and told him we were being robbed – I reminded him that we, the galleries, were supposed to receive 10% of the flea market income. Things became quite unpleasant. I don’t remember what the outcome was. I don’t think we ever got the full amount due to us. It was very sad and showed how unappreciative of Wolf they were. “Friends in a rooming house, Abel Road, Hillbrow , March 1973” (David Goldblatt Fifty-One Years, Museu d’ArtContemporani de Barcelona, 2001, p175) FS: Wolf was a very fine man. We worked together for many years after we’d established The Visual Arts Council of South Africa. DG: He was indeed a very fine man and he knew a great deal about art; he really had the welfare of the Market at heart. FS: Can you talk about the processes of your work. I imagine a lot of your photographs might be instinctive, that you don’t really formulate too much about the actual photograph. Sure, elements like composition, cropping and what will finally appear in the frame are obviously important and have to be reckoned and play an important part, but as to the specific subject: how much of that is instinct and how much by design? DG: It is hard to explain the process. I usually start off with an idea about the subject – I seldom photograph things in isolation. Say I become interested in, for example, Afrikaners or Boksburg. I might make some forays to establish what it is I’m looking for and then, once I have an idea that eventually becomes something I can approach with a sense of what it is I’m about, the process becomes instinctive – instinctive in the sense that I look at a scene and walk around it, look at it and look at it again. I don’t shoot from the hip – you know we used to have a friend, John Brett Cohen (sadly now dead) – he shot from the hip. He did some brilliant work, but it wasn’t my way. So depending on what I was doing, I would shoot from a small camera – a Leica, or a large camera, a view camera. In all cases, my approach would be the same. I needed to know what I was looking for, and what my subject matter, broadly speaking, was about. I would then hone in on what fitted. FS: On the broader aspect, do you discard much of what you shoot? DG: Well it varies, varies a lot. I mean, most of the work I’ve done over the last twenty years has been on a view camera, that is quite a big instrument with a black cloth and ground glass and the film is big and very expensive. So I rarely shoot more than two sheets, one for insurance. Lately, I’ve been working on a project where I’m shooting too many; I’ve become wild – shooting four or five exposures, and it’s bad – it doesn’t mean I’m doing it better. FS: How did you first become interested in photography? What was your initial impetus? DG: I was fourteen years old. I wanted to record things for model boat building. I used to build model boats and also collected stamps – I wanted to record watermarks and things like that. “Dominee S. M. van Vuuren of the Dutch Reformed Church (Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk), Witfield, Atprayer with a family during a pastoral call, 17 June 1980” (David Goldblatt Fifty-One Years, Museu d’ArtContemporani de Barcelona, 2001, p266) Very quickly, it grew into photography itself and then I became obsessed with the ideas that came out of the magazines like Look, Life, etc. They were published every two weeks and were pushing out amazing stuff. That was the golden age of picture magazines. TV had not yet swept through Europe, so millions of people bought magazines as a sort of visual window. Once TV came in, picture magazines began to die. But during the time they were around, they published amazing stuff. It was that period that excited and provoked me. I then began to photograph more seriously, and began to photograph at school. I photographed Ronnie Friedman cribbing in a Latin class. It grew from that kind of thing into an interest in the world around. FS: The first sign of recognition: How did this come about? DG: Well, it depends on what you mean by recognition. The first pictures that I ever published were in a little magazine called South African Photography, published and owned by Cecil Holmes. “Saturday afternoon rugby: South African Police versusIscor (Iron and Steel Corporation) at Loftus Versfeld,Pretoria, 1967” (Some Afrikaners Revisited, Umuzi,Cape Town, 2007, p174) FS: How old were you then? DG: We are talking about the late 1940s early ‘50s. I must have been in my late teens. Anyway, that was still amateur stuff. Then, during the ANC’s Defiance Campaign of 1952, I sent some work over to Picture Post. When Apartheid was first introduced at the Johannesburg railway station, I did a series of pictures which I sent to the editor of Picture Post. The editor rejected them and sent me a polite note. But when the Defiance Campaign got into full swing, he sent me a cable to send him anything I had. There was a big meeting on Freedom Square and I photographed that very badly. I sent him some of that stuff. Then I went to a meeting at the Trades Hall in Kerk Street. This was a mass meeting of the ANC – everybody was there. I was the only person there with a camera, my first Leica. I photographed and camera to find that the film hadn’t engaged in the sprockets! I then began to realise that while I was interested in events as a citizen, I was less interested as a photographer. My real concern was with the conditions and values that lead to the events. Editors wanted photographs of political events – mostly those of violence. I had to accept that, as a coward, I was not able to supply the kind of photographs required. I am a coward – I abhor physical violence. I don’t know how to deal with it. I became more interested in what lead to the events. That gradually permeated into what I was doing. “Freda Fleischman and her father, Highlands North, 1973” (David Goldblatt Fifty-One Years, Museu d’ArtContemporani de Barcelona, 2001, p172) In the early 1960s, I sent some work to a magazine called Town, in England. It was quite an avant-garde publication, the male equivalent of Queen, which was publishing very strong fashion work. Town was mostly of men’s interests and they employed very fine writers, designers and photographers. So I sent some work across and then got a letter back from the assistant editor saying that they would like me to do some work around the Anglo-American Corporation, on which they were going to do a big story. I submitted my work, which they published. Then their assistant editor, Sally Angwin, came to South Africa. By that time, I had sold my father’s business in Randfontein. It was in 1963 and I was now a full time photographer, with no ties to speak of. I had two Leicas and a lot of hope. FS: How did you exist? DG: Well, I took enough out of the business to keep us going for about a year. Anyway, Sally Angwin was a South African and she came out here to get married. She contacted me and she was then commissioned by a man called Desmond Niven (the grandson of Percy Fitzpatrick). He had bought the South African Tatler, which was a real social rag, and he commissioned Sally to turn it into a sort of Queen & Town. He wanted to make an avant-garde magazine for the South African market, and she became its editor. She was a very fine magazine editor, very accomplished. She recruited me to do a lot of work. So that was for me a major breakthrough, because then my work became known. I did some interesting stuff and she was very receptive. And so that’s more or less how I started. “Going to work: 3:30 am, Wolwekraal-Marabastad bus, standing passengers have slumped to the floor, 1983” (David Goldblatt Fifty-One Years, Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, 2001, p283) FS: I recall that a few years ago the SABCTV, used or in this case abused, one of your photographs to misrepresent an event. Wolf (Weinek) and I got involved in an attempt to get them to set the record straight. But I think by then you had already received the benefit of legal action against them and got the matter sorted out. DG: Yes, of course, I remember. What happened was that Lily and I were out for the night. When we got home Steven, our eldest son, said that he had seen a piece on the eight o’clock television news where they had used a photograph of mine of an ouderling in the N.G. Kerk. It was a mission church, the coloured church. They’d used a photograph of mine which showed the ouderling and his wife and daughter walking home from church – I think it was in Carnarvon – anyway it was a totally innocuous photograph and the SABC used it to illustrate some ANC insurgents who had been shot on the Swazi border. I phoned them up the next day and gave them hell and told them I was taking it further. I then got on to my lawyer, Raymond Tucker, who was a real tiger. Raymond got them to broadcast an apology on the same news programme. FS: What are some of the processes that guide your work? How much is by design, composition, editing and so on? DG: I don’t walk about with a camera all the time. I only pick up a camera when I have a fair idea about what I’m interested in – a certain aspect of the country initially, black/white interaction or confrontation or any other subject. Then I instil the needed visual qualities. I always do a little preliminary research and afterwards, if the photograph is of interest, I will research further or commission someone else to do research. I often give context or information to my photographs. I don’t regard my pictures as pristine objects but rather as part of the matrix of life here, hence the research and information. FS: When you were photographing your now famous series “Some Afrikaners” and “Some Afrikaners Revisited”, did you ever encounter any hostility? DG: Very little among Afrikaners themselves. FS: What are you currently working on? DG: Post-Apartheid public sculptures in our city, landscapes in the Karoo and ex-offenders at the scene of a crime. FS: What do you see as the standout moments in your career? DG: I don’t think in those terms, I really don’t. At the moment, I’m thinking about a photograph I’m going to be doing on Monday morning. FS: How do you handle all the worldwide acclaim and attention? It is, after all, more than most South African artists have managed to attain. DG: Well first of all, I don’t regard myself as an artist. The word ‘art’ is not in my vocabulary. DG: I’m not an artist, but let’s not argue about terminology. You ask me how I handle it. I don’t know. I just deal with people when they come to me. It could be nice to have the ego massaged, but I really don’t have an ego. It’s not of great or any importance to me. FS: In the world that I come from, you are regarded as an artist, one of the great social painters.1 Camera Austria Prize 1995; Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts, University of Cape Town 2001; Hasselblad Foundational Award in Photography 2006; Honorary Doctorate of Literature, University of the Witwatersrand, 2008; Henri Cartier-Bresson Award, 2009; Lifetime Achievement Award, Arts and Culture Trust, 2009; Lucie Lifetime Achievement Award, 2010; Kraszna-Krausz Photography Book Award (with Ivan Vladislavic), 2011; Honorary Doctorate San Francisco Art Institute, 2011. South African National Gallery, Cape Town; Johannesburg Art Gallery; University of the Witwatersrand; Museum Kunst Palast, Düsseldorf; Bibliotheque Nationale. Paris; Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; The French National Art Collection; The Art Gallery of Western Australia; Ludwig Museum, Vienna; Huis Marseille, Amsterdam; Fotomuseum, Winterthur, Switzerland; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Photographers’ Gallery, London, 1974, 1986; Side Gallery, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1985; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 1975; South African National Gallery, Cape Town, 1983; Various exhibitions since 1978 at the Market Theatre Galleries, Johannesburg; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1998; Netherlands Architecture Institute, Rotterdam, 1998-9; South African National Gallery, Cape Town, 1999; Axa Gallery, New York, 2001; Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, 2002; Witte de With, Rotterdam, 2002; Centro Cultural de Belem-Fundacao, Lisbon, 2002; Modern Art, Oxford, 2003; Pala’s des Beaux Arts, Brussels, 2003; Lenbachhaus, Munich, 2003; Museum Kunst Palast, Duesseldorf, 2005; Johannesburg Art Gallery 2005; Arles Rencontres, 2006; Fotomuseuin Winterthur, Switzerland, 2007; Fluis Marseilles, Amsterdam, 2007; Berkeley Art Museum, 2007; Serralves Museum, Porto, Portugal, 2008; Konsthal, Malmo, Sweden, 2009; New Museum, New York, 2009; Jewish Museum, New York, 2010; Jewish Museum, Cape Town, 2010; Amherst Art Museum, Massachusetts, 2010; Various group shows including: “South Africa: the Cordoned Heart”, South Africa and the LTSA, 1986; In/Sight, African Photographers, 1940 to the Present”, Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1996; “Blank Architecture, apartheid and after”, Rotterdam and Berlin, 1998-99; “Home”, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, 2000; “The Short Century”, Museum Villa Stuck, Munich, 2001; “Documenta 11”, Kassel, Germany, 2002; “Africa Remix”, Museum Kunst Palast, Duesseldorf 2003; “History, Memory, Society”, with Henri Cartier Bresson and Lee Friedlander, Tate Modem, London, 2004; “Faces in the Crowd”, Whitechapel, London, 2005; “Documenta 12”, Kassel. Germany, 2007; “Figure & Fictions” V&A London, 2011;Venice Biennale, 2011. On The Mines with Nadine Gordimer, Struik, Cape Town, 1973 Some Afrikaners Photographed, Murray Crawford Johannesburg, 1975 In Boksburg, Gallery Press, Cape Town, 1982 Lifetimes: Under Apartheid, with Nadine Gordimer, Knopf, New York, 1986 The Transported of KwaNdebele with Brenda Goldblatt and Phillip van Niekerk, Aperture and Duke University, New York, 1989. South Africa: The Structure of Things Then, Oxford University Press. Cape Town, and Monacelli Press, New York, 1988 David Goldblatt 55 (one of a series about photographers) Phaidon Press, London, 2001 David Goldblatt Fifty-One Years, Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, 2001 Particulars, Goodman Gallery Editions, JHB, 2003 [Awarded Arles Book Prize for 2004] Intersections, Prestel, Munich, 2005 David Goldblatt Photographs, Contrasto, Rome, 2006 David Goldblatt HasselbladAwad 2006 Hatje Cantz, Ostfildeni and F-Jasselblad Center Some Afrikaners Revisited, Umuzi, Cape Town, 2007 Intersections Intersected, Museum Serralves, Porto, 2008 Kith, Kin and Khaya, Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, 2010 Frank Startz is a Johannesburg-based artist, with a lengthy record in the field of Jewish civil rights activism. The interview with David Goldblatt featured in this article was conducted by him in May 2012. 
AN INTERVIEW WITH DAVID GOLDBLATT
APPENDIX
DAVID GOLDBLATT – SELECT AWARDS, PUBLIC COLLECTIONS, EXHIBITIONS AND BOOKS
Prizes and Awards
Principal public collections
Principal Exhibitions:
Books
NOTES
