David Goldblatt (South African, born 1930) Joe Maloney, boiler-house attendant, City Deep Gold Mine, 1966 (framed)
Provenance : Provenance A private collection. As the titles of David Goldblatt's photographs would suggest, the meticulous investigation into his subjects and their context are demonstrated as a significant trope in the photographer's work. While hesitant to label himself an artist, Goldblatt has made a name for himself as a forensic critic of the socio-politics of his time, bolstering his career as one of the most successful South African Photographers of the 20th century. Born in 1930, Goldblatt grew up to resist the oppression and inequality of the apartheid, not only in the content of his work, but also in his own life when he started the Market Photo Workshop in 1989. This school of photography was established to enable access to Photography education and exhibition opportunities for marginalised communities in areas of South Africa. With Jewish Lithuanian heritage, Goldblatt's background was heavy with an understanding of what it means to be persecuted against; his grandparents fleeing Lithuania for South Africa in 1893. The nature of his works, while perhaps providing a social criticism, did not end there, and a layered reading of his works are also consistent in his photography. In a Joe Maloney, boiler-house attendant, City Deep Gold Mine, we are presented with a fatigued worker at the City Deep Gold Mine. A somewhat personal element to Goldblatt, given his early years growing up near the goldmines, this work presents us with the other side of the goldmine industry. A demonstration of inequality, the goldmine industry fed the minority elitist system with little given in terms of currency or quality of life to the manual labourers of the industry. The irony of this juxtaposition is striking and the personification of such inequalities more so. Given the intense tenebrism; the contrasting light of this work, the subject is thrown centre stage and characterises the realities of the socio-political inequalities. Bibliography Ian Bourland, 'David Goldblatt', in African Artists, From 1882 to Now, (London: Phaidon Press Limited, 2021), p. 126.
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