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Boorgat is die Antwoord, De Brak, on the Fraserburg-Sutherland road. Western Cape
David Goldblatt
Artwork 2007
David Goldblatt's colour photograph 'Boorgat is die Antwoord, De Brak, on the Fraserburg-Sutherland road. Western Cape' shows a white sign with red text in a field of dry shrubs.
Artwork: David Goldblatt, Boorgat is die Antwoord, De Brak, on the Fraserburg-Sutherland road. Western Cape (2007). Archival pigment ink on cotton rag. 120 x 130 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Goodman Gallery.
Artist David Goldblatt Title Boorgat is die Antwoord, De Brak, on the Fraserburg-Sutherland road. Western Cape Date 2007 Materials Archival pigment ink on cotton rag Dimensions 120 x 130 cm Edition Edition of 10 Credit Courtesy of the artist and Goodman Gallery

This photograph is included in Regarding Intersections, 2014.

“I was drawn,” the late photographer David Goldblatt wrote, “not to the events of the time but to the quiet and commonplace where nothing ‘happened’ and yet all was contained and immanent.” A preeminent chronicler of South African life under apartheid and after, Goldblatt bore witness to how this life is written on the land, in its structures or their absence. Unconcerned with documenting significant historic moments, his photographs stand outside the events of the time and yet are eloquent of them. Through Goldblatt’s lens, the prosaic reveals a telling poignancy. Even in those images that appear benign, much is latent in them – histories and politics, desires and dread. His photographs are quietly critical reflections on the values and conditions that have shaped the country; those structures both ideological and tangible. Among his most notable photobooks are On the Mines (1973), Some Afrikaners Photographed (1975), In Boksburg (1982), The Structure of Things Then (1998), and Particulars (2003).

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