Strauss & co - 2014 Review

GOLDBLATT David 1930- In March 2011, Strauss & Co established a reliable benchmark for work by David Goldblatt when they sold a 1980 portrait from his essay In Boksburg (published in 1982) for R77 980, the work’s middle estimate. At their 10 November 2014 sale in Johannesburg, they further consolidated this acclaimed Johannesburg photographer’s reputation at auction: of the seven photographs offered, five surpassed their high estimate. Printed by Goldblatt at his home and studio in Fellside, the seven gelatin silver prints are documents of composure and waiting. Both in mood and subject, Goldblatt’s portraits of working-class men and women bear out his method of photographing “the quiet and commonplace where nothing ‘happened’ and yet all was contained and immanent”. 1 Notwithstanding the tight composition of his portrait Boss Boy, Battery Reef, Randfontein Estates Mine, 1966 , which exceeded its high estimate of R30 000, achieving R50 019, location plays an important role in all Goldblatt’s photographs. The seven photographs offered for sale variously portrayed aspects of South Africa’s industrial heartland, with scenes ranging from a bucolic smallholding outside Randfontein (where Goldblatt was born and raised) to the claustrophobic interior of a bus travelling from the former homeland of KwaNdebele to Pretoria in 1983. Goldblatt began his patient exploration and meticulous observation of South Africa’s social landscape two decades earlier, on 15 September 1963. “I made the decision not to try and become a big time photographer,” Goldblatt has said of this decision. “As a big time photographer you needed to have a studio, a secretary; you needed an assistant and a messenger. I didn’t have a studio and I very rarely worked in a studio. I specialised, David Goldblatt, Lots 125-131, 10 November 2014 Sale 76