David Goldblatt – South African Photographs 1952–2006

David Goldblatt’s photographic projects are all set in and deal with South Africa, and they are all occupied with the people, the work, the social constellations and the constructed and natural spaces of this country. They depict all this in a direct, tangible and concrete here and now, which is at the same time permeated by an awareness of the history, the structures and the balance of power from which the immediate present emerges in this country.

In the series about mines and miners the closely-woven portrait of the Boers, also known as Afrikaners, the portrait of a small town inhabited by middle class white people, the vivid visualisation of the black people’s excessively long way to work, the large-scale project on housing, shops and churches as “sculpted in stone” social structures, right up to the series of close-ups, the cropped images of gestures and attitudes and on to the new South Africa, to the colour photographs of urban officials, new work forms, the streets of Johannesburg and the constellations in the country: David Goldblatt (*1930 in Randfontein), as an exemplary documentary photographer, has explored the violent, conflict-torn history of his country, constantly focusing on the political and sociological development of South African society, the social disunity and the turbulent political events during apartheid.

With this large-scale retrospective, Fotomuseum Winterthur pays tribute to the photographic work of David Goldblatt, winner of the Hasselblad Award 2006, the most important international prize for photography.

The exhibition was curated by Martni Parr and Urs Stahel. A cooperation with the Rencontres internationales de la photographie, Arles.

Main sponsor: Stanley Thomas Johnson Foundation