As a Jewish man born in South Africa, David Goldblatt (1930-2018) was an insider and an outsider at the same time. Born to parents who fled Lithuania to escape persecution, Goldblatt was possessed with a profound sensitivity to the exploited and oppressed. He took up photography as a teenager and began working full time in 1963 after selling the family store following the death of his father to document South Africa at the height of apartheid.
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“David Goldblatt was a very political person and believed strongly in documenting the injustices that he saw around him. But he didn’t think of what he was doing as activism and he certainly didn’t want it to be propaganda,” says Pace Gallery curator Oliver Schultz.
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Reflecting on what he describes as Goldblatt’s “compassion and dispassion”, Schultz discussed how the photographer’s matter of fact approach maintains its own profound emotional force. Although straightforward in its presentation, Goldblatt’s images can be unpacked like Russian nesting dolls, offering layers of meaning aligned with the viewer’s proximity to the subject of his work.
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