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David Goldblatt (1930-2019)


Goldblatt, David (South African 1930)
Mrs Miriam Mazibuko watering her garden, Extension 8, Far East Alexandra
Township, Johannesburg. 12 September 2006
Silver gelatine on fibre based paper, signed, 2006/12/09, edition 2/10
81 x 104cm
Documentary photography in South Africa is inextricably linked to the name David Goldblatt. Having
photographed for about 60 years, and still actively producing new work, Goldblatt has created a prolific
archive of images that elucidates the complex history of the country in a way that intimately communicates
its particular struggles. More recently, Goldblatt has photographed the current socio-political mileu,
exposing contemporary strife, anxiety and the aftermath of apartheid. Mrs Miriam Mazibuko watering her
garden, Extension 8, Far East Alexandra Township, Johannesburg depicts a woman outside her newly
constructed RDP (Reconstruction and Development Programme) house which only has one room. The
photograph tells the story of Mrs Mazibuko, whose four children live with their grandparents because
of the lack of space in her government-awarded house. Goldblatt's composition of this photograph is
almost painterly. In the far distance the headstones form one band of tiny rectangular shapes. In front
of this a band of informal housing is cramped together in such a way that only the haphazard roofs are
visible - a larger set of forms. The focal point of the photograph is a single rectangle - Mrs Mazibuko's
house - and the repetition of similar shapes, which increase, as they get closer to the foreground,
creates a sense that they are progressive: people moving out of one box and into another until their final
resting place in a box beneath the ground.

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