Artist Database

David Goldblatt became a full-time photographer in the 1960s after selling the family clothing store he inherited from his parents. He regarded himself as an observer and a critic of South African society, not an activist, and a photographer rather than an artist. Although his work was not overtly politically charged, it documented and reflected the social circumstances and struggles of life under apartheid and the country’s landscapes altered by human occupation. Goldblatt founded the Market Photography Workshop in Johannesburg in 1989, and published numerous books on his work including On the Mines (with Nadine Gordimer, Struik 1973), Some Afrikaners Photographed (Murray Crawford, 1975), and In Boksburg (The Gallery Press, 1982). He was the first South African to have a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, in 1998, and exhibited at Documenta 11 and 12 in Kassel, Germany, and the 54th Biennale in Venice in 2011. In 2018 a large scale retrospective of over 200 photographs and approximately 100 unpublished documents was exhibited at the Centre Pompidou. Goldblatt won numerous awards including the 2006 Hasselblad award, the 2009 Henri Cartier-Bresson Award, and the 2013 ICP (International Center of Photography) Infinity Award.