David Goldblatt
Saturday afternoon in Sunward Park was first published in In Boksburg (1982), a photographic essay that witnessed the ordinary lives of middle-class white South Africans in far-from-ordinary times. To Goldblatt, the photograph of a man mowing his lawn extended beyond document to metaphor – an image of the expansion of white suburbia across the veld. He realised, however, that this reading was not self-evident, that context beyond what the caption could offer was necessary to understand the significance of the photograph. Indeed, throughout his career, Goldblatt spoke often of the located specificity of his work, a specificity he believed failed to resonate with international audiences, with people unacquainted with South African particulars. Central to his photographs is an abiding sense of place, a familiarity with the land only a native can claim. “I remain fascinated by the intimate kind of knowledge you get from living in a place your whole life,” he told the writer Ivan Vladislavić, “the things you absorb with your mother’s milk, as it were.”
This photograph appears in In Boksburg (first edition), 1982; Fifty-one Years, 2001; Kith Kin & Khaya, 2011; In Boksburg (second edition), 2015; On Common Ground, 2018; and Structures of Dominion and Democracy, 2018.
b.1930, Randfontein; d.2018, Johannesburg
“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).