Strauss & co - 2014 Review

I suppose, in location photography, if there is such a thing.” 2 Goldblatt’s early black-and-white photography, particularly that dating from the 1960s and 70s, was greatly shaped by his literary friendships. More so than photographers, it was writers who exacted the most influence on Goldblatt. Writers enabled him to see and understand the location of his photography in more than mere cursory terms. Two of the seven photographs offered for sale – Boss Boy and Greaser, No. 2 North Steam Winder, Randfontein Estates Mine, 1965 – appear in the original edition of Goldblatt’s debut book, On the Mines (1973). It was also the first of two collaborations with author Nadine Gordimer. “Her early stories made tangible for me the tastes and experiences, smells and places I knew intimately but which I had never managed to verbalise,” Goldblatt has remarked. “The stories actively propelled me into wanting to realise this acute sense of these places and people in photographs.” 3 Goldblatt’s entry into Soweto and Hillbrow was similarly framed by his literary acquaintances. In 1970, at the behest of poet and journalist Charles Eglington, Goldblatt began photographing Soweto for Optima magazine. It was Eglington, Optima’s editor, who introduced Goldblatt to Sipho Sepamla. This novelist and poet became Goldblatt’s early guide to Soweto, a dormitory community that white visitors had to receive a permit to enter. Goldblatt produced his portrait of Patience Poni visiting her parents, Ruth and Jackson Poni, in August 1972 under these strange conditions. At around the same time Goldblatt was also photographing the inhabitants of Hillbrow. His 1974 photograph of Hillbrow’s urban form, observed in the wing mirror of his stationary bakkie in Troyeville, was explicitly conceivedwith playwright Barney Simon in mind. 4 Simon had just published his remarkable collection of short stories, Jo’burg, Sis!, which featured a Goldblatt image on the cover. Fittingly, Goldblatt’s Troyeville & Hillbrow, Johannesburg, 1974 , a work created by one artist for another, far exceeded its high estimate of R30 000, eventually selling for R62 524. Sean O’Toole 1. Goldblatt, David (1998) South Africa: The Structure of Things Then , Cape Town: Oxford University Press. Page 7. 2. Goldblatt, David, interview with Sean O’Toole, 11 November 2010. 3. Stevenson, Michael (2005), ‘Markers of Presence’, in Intersections , Munich: Prestel. Page 101. 4. Goldblatt, David, interview with Sean O’Toole, 5 December 2010. Railway Shunter, from the ‘Some Afrikaners Photographed’ series gelatin silver print sheet size: 40 by 30cm Sold R75 029, 10 November 2014 Boss Boy, from the ‘On the Mines’ series gelatin silver print sheet size: 29 by 30cm Sold R50 019, 10 November 2014 Troyeville & Hillbrow, Johannesburg, 1974, from the ‘Traffic’ series gelatin silver print sheet size: 30 by 37,5cm Sold R62 524, 10 November 2014 77