From August 16 to December 29, 2001, the AXA Gallery will present a fifty-one year retrospective of the work of David Goldblatt, the renowned South African documentary photographer. The exhibition comprises over one hundred photographs taken between 1948 and 1999—coinciding with the era of apartheid rule and, later, of transition to democracy—during which time, Goldblatt incisively probed and explored the South African social terrain. The exhibition is the first retrospective of his work to be held in the United States."This retrospective, while partially summarizing the photographic and textual essays published and exhibited by the artist, offers a wide selection of photographs taken in different communities over a period of several decades," writes Corinne Diserens, who with Okwui Enwezor co-curated the exhibition. Goldblatt's work represents "a link with the world and a critical exploration of South African society, where the memory of a recent history—that of the Industrial Revolution and its direct descendant, colonialism and of apartheid and after—is engaged."
The exhibition and international tour have been organized by the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA). The AXA Gallery is sponsored by AXA Financial and its subsidiary The Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States. Additional assistance has been provided by AXA Nordstern Art Insurance Corporation.
David Goldblatt was born in 1930 in Randfontein, a gold mining town near Johannesburg. His grandparents were Lithuanian immigrants who fled the persecution of Jews in the late nineteenth century. While his upbringing was liberal, Goldblatt grew up in a milieu of endemic racism which, beginning in the 1950s, was formalized into the ideology of apartheid. In his late teens he began what became a lifetime's pursuit: "to probe and question the values of his immediate world." Over the years these explorations led to a number of photographic essays from which the present exhibition was drawn.
In the 1960s, Goldblatt began photographing the gold mines of the Witwatersrand, South Africa's famous "Reef of Gold," where the industrial landscape and social substructures were disappearing under economic pressure. These photographs, of white managers and black laborers and of working conditions, are at once a record of a way of life and a study of extremes. Having grown up among and yet largely apart from Afrikaners, Goldblatt felt compelled to know more about the group whose powerful influence so pervaded South African life. Likewise, he was intrigued by his own ambivalence toward the contradictory nature of people at once generous in spirit and yet full of fear and even often of hate. The resulting photographs were lauded for the way in which Goldblatt sought out "the quiet and commonplace where nothing 'happened' and yet all was contained and immanent…"
One of the most insidious effects of apartheid was the system of strict racial separation that "discouraged and denied us the chance to experience the lives of people of a different racial category." During the 1970s, Goldblatt examined the daily life of people living under these circumstances, photographing "black" communities, such as Soweto and Transkei, and Fietas, a small Indian suburb of Johannesburg.
During 1970 and 1980, he examined life in Boksburg, a white, middle-class, small-town community neighboring Johannesburg. These photographs describe the characteristic homogenization of suburbia, and at the same time represent a return to and re-examination of the world in which Goldblatt was raised.
In 1983, Goldblatt was invited to produce a photographic essay on homeland transport—a form of commuting to work resulting from the apartheid system of "spatial engineering." The strict separation of races required that black South Africans be segregated into ethnic areas called bantustans, or homelands. Because most of the homelands were remote from major centers of work, much of the labor force was moved across long distances in subsidized bus and train services. Following this, Goldblatt was engaged in a fifteen year project documenting the built environment of South Africa, closely examining its ideological structures and their ability to express the beliefs and mannerisms of its residents.
The exhibition David Goldblatt: Fifty-One Years is accompanied by a catalogue published by Actar and the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona. The fully-illustrated catalogue contains essays by J. M. Coetzee, Corinne Diserens, Okwui Enwezor, Michael Godby, Nadine Gordimer, Chris Killip, and Ivan Vladislavic.
The AXA Gallery presents works from all fields of the visual arts, including exhibitions originating outside of New York that would not otherwise have a presence in the city, as well as works from New York collections that would benefit from preservation and public presentation. The AXA Gallery is sponsored by AXA Financial, Inc. and its Subsidiary The Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States.
Additional assistance has been provided by AXA Art Insurance Corporation.
All photographs are copyright © David Goldblatt
