ADIEU DAVID GOLDBLATT.

By Nii B. Andrews.

South Africa and the global art world sustained a significant loss this last Monday with the passing of the renowned photographer, David Goldblatt; he was 87.

His camera bore unflinching witness to the darkest horrors of apartheid.

A farmer’s son with his nursemaid, Heimweeberg, Nietverdiend, Western Transvaal, 1964.

Goldblatt utilized a rigorously considered moral and aesthetic approach thus producing photographs with a minimalist realism in which his personal integrity shone through.

In the apartheid years this was not without considerable personal risk.

The dethroning of Cecil John Rhodes, University of Cape Town, 9 April 2015

He almost always shot in black and white – perhaps alluding to his sense of isolation for he described himself as “a self- appointed observer and critic of the society into which I was born”.

For Goldblatt, during the apartheid years, “color seemed too sweet a medium to express the anger, disgust and fear that apartheid inspired”.

Church goers. ?1968.

He continued shooting photographs after Mandela’s release from prison.

Goldblatt was unequivocal that the values “are not the same values that Mandela stood up for; they are greed and self-congratulation”.

Going home. 1984.

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