David Goldblatt HonFRPS was a South African photographer noted for his portrayal of South Africa during the apartheid period.
20 Facts About David Goldblatt
1.
2.
David Goldblatt was born in Randfontein, Gauteng Province, and was the youngest of the three sons of Eli and Olga David Goldblatt.
3.
David Goldblatt's grandparents arrived in South Africa from Lithuania around 1893, having fled the persecution of Jews there.
4.
David Goldblatt got his first camera from his father, who bought it from Goldblatt's brother, who had brought home a damaged German Contax camera when he came back from serving in World War II.
5.
David Goldblatt documented developments in South Africa through the period of apartheid until it ended in the 1990s.
6.
David Goldblatt made a life of photographing the issues that went beyond the events of apartheid and documented the conditions that led to them.
7.
David Goldblatt went to exhibition openings but secretly hated the attention they threw upon him.
8.
David Goldblatt got around the label of artist by simply calling himself a photographer.
9.
David Goldblatt claimed he was not an activist, unlike the majority of his friends and other photographers during this time.
10.
Only when David Goldblatt was able to achieve the same "depth" in his colour work that he had previously achieved in his black and white photography did he choose to explore this extensively.
11.
David Goldblatt's work is held in major museum collections worldwide including the Museum of Modern Art.
12.
Interest in David Goldblatt's work increased significantly after a travelling exhibition of 51 years of his work, and the eleventh Documenta.
13.
David Goldblatt has written extensively on architecture and the deeper meaning contained within the buildings we occupy.
14.
David Goldblatt was inspired by photography in magazines such as Life, Look and Picture Post, which helped him with things such as captioning his photographs.
15.
David Goldblatt cited writers and visual artists as his major influences, among them Jillian Becker, Guy Tillim, Herman Charles Bosman, Nadine Gordimer, Njabulo Ndebele, Ivan Vladislavic and playwright Barney Simon.
16.
David Goldblatt helped influence the work of the photographer Santu Mofokeng as they studied together during the time of apartheid.
17.
David Goldblatt was always accessible to everyone no matter what, even in his later life.
18.
David Goldblatt died on 25 June 2018 in Johannesburg from cancer.
19.
David Goldblatt was survived by his wife, Lily Goldblatt, children Steven, Brenda, and Ronnie, and two grandchildren.
20.
David Goldblatt's work is held in the following permanent public collections:.