MCA saddened by death of David Goldblatt as it builds towards his retrospective exhibition in October
The death of David Goldblatt has hit hard at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, which is in the middle of creating a retrospective exhibition of the South African photographer’s work.
Arts
Don't miss out on the headlines from Arts. Followed categories will be added to My News.
The death of David Goldblatt has hit hard at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, which is in the middle of creating a retrospective exhibition of the South African photographer’s work spanning decades of social and political change.
Goldblatt died peacefully in his Johannesburg home on Monday at the age of 87.
In March, the MCA announced that chief curator Rachel Kent was working towards a large Goldblatt exhibition to be held between October 19 this year and March 3 next year, as part of the Sydney International Art Series.
As part of her research, Kent last year undertook a 1500km “road trip” with Goldblatt through the sites of some of his most famous photographic series.
Sydney International Art Series announced
These are the places where he memorialised the cruelty of apartheid, the grinding lives of gold miners, and the redemption of ex-cons whom he photographed at the sites of their felonies.
“It has been a huge privilege to know and work with David towards his MCA survey exhibition, travel cross-country with him, and gain insight into just some of the history and landmarks that have inspired his truly remarkable career,” Kent said today.
Goldblatt was “a truly great artist”, although his modesty would forbid him from admitting it, MCA director Elizabeth Ann Macgregor said.
“We are greatly saddened by this loss and very honoured that he gave us the opportunity to work with him on the first retrospective of his work in the southern hemisphere,” Ms Macgregor said.
At the announcement of the exhibition in March, Rachel Kent said Goldblatt had been taking pictures since he was 18 years old.
When the MCA asked him to collaborate on the exhibition, Goldblatt responded by asking Kent to go on a road trip with him.
“It was wild,” Kent said.
“Essentially we drove from the very top to the very bottom of the country, from Johannesburg all the way down to Cape Town and diverted through a rather perilous mountain range on the way.
“But the beauty of it was to see the history of the country through David’s eyes. And he told me all the stories — where he went and what he photographed. We visited some of the sites where he’s made his most iconic photographs and series.”
Kent was moved by the sight of a part of Johannesburg called Pageview, where the Asian, Malay and Indian community was forcibly removed in the 1970s under apartheid. After the inhabitants’ departure, their homes were bulldozed.
White settlers were meant to move in to Pageview, but never did. Goldblatt photographed the area post destruction, and Kent said it remains desolate and abandoned to this day.
Goldblatt met Mandela on five occasions, and his portraits of Mandela will be in the MCA show.
Goldblatt’s apartheid-era photographs are in black and white.
“He says, ‘you need to look at a black and white photograph. It doesn’t immediately come to you’,” Kent said at the exhibition announcement.
“For apartheid and the anger and fear it stirred, there was no medium other than this to work with.”
From the 1990s, with black majority rule, the photographer began using digital photography, and his pictures became large and colourful.
“I think without question David is one of the greatest living photographers of our time,” Kent said in March.
“He talks about this idea of holding up the mirror to ourselves and our values, to reflect our condition and the world in all of its cruelty, its imperfections and its undeniable beauty.”