The Old and New in David Goldblatt's 'Portraits'

South Africa Mon 24-10-2011

The Old and New in David Goldblatt's 'Portraits'
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The great photographer and portraitist Bill Brandt said, simply: "I think a good portrait ought to tell something of the subject’s past and suggest something of his future."
And Evelyn Hofer, who has been called ‘the most famous ‘unknown’ photographer in America’ said: "In reality, all we photographers photograph is ourselves in the other… all the time."

These two statements, an ideal and an understanding, offer something approaching a ‘philosophy’ of portraiture to which I subscribe.- David Goldblatt.

David Goldblatt, Members of the Constitutional Assembly on the steps of the Senate House in the parliamentary precinct, shortly after they had unanimously adopted the Constitution of South Africa. Cape Town, 11 October 1996

In a solo exhibition at Goodman Gallery Cape, titled simply Portraits, photographer David Goldblatt brings together old and new portraits of South Africans taken over the course of his 50-year career. The exhibition includes several commissioned portraits of well-known South African figures never shown before, and a curated selection of photographs spanning the 1960s ‘70s and ‘80s.

Also on show is the series Ex-Offenders, recently shown at the 54th Venice Biennale, in which Goldblatt invites convicted and alleged criminals to revisit the scene of the crime of which they’ve been accused, and to be photographed there. “I wanted to burrow under the statistics,” says Goldblatt, “to meet some of the doers of crime, do portraits of them, and hear from them about their lives and what they had done.” Most of his subjects in the series were trying to go straight under very difficult circumstances, which is why Goldblatt refers to them not as criminals or offenders, but as ex-offenders.

David Goldblatt was born in 1930 in Randfontein, South Africa, and since the early 1960s he has devoted all of his time to photography. He has held solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and the New Museum in New York, and the Fondation Henri-Cartier Bresson in Paris, among others. He was awarded the Hasselblad Award for Photography in 2006 and the Henri Cartier-Bresson Award in 2009, and he is the 2010 Lucie Award Lifetime Achievement Honoree.

His work is included in major international collections, including those of the Bibliotheque National de Paris, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Victoria & Albert Museum in London, and the French National Art Collection. He has published several books of his work.

David Goldblatt's 'Portraits'
Exhibition Opening at Gooodman Gallery Cape Town
Saturday 29 October 2011 at 12h00

For More Information Contact:

Storm Janse Van Rensburg
Email: Storm@Goodman-Gallery.Com
Claire Van Blerck
Email: Claire@Goodman-Gallery.Com

Goodman Gallery, Cape Town
3rd Floor, Fairweather House,176 Sir Lowry Rd, Woodstock
Tel. +27 (0)21 462 7573/4 Fax +27 (0)21 462 7579
Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Friday 09h30 – 17h30, Saturday 10h00 – 16h00
Cpt@Goodman-Gallery.Com | Www.Goodman-Gallery.Com

Posted By: Allan Kapten

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