1 00:00:25,334 --> 00:00:27,909 DAVID GOLDBLATT: The camera is a very strange instrument. 2 00:00:30,322 --> 00:00:33,667 It demands first of all, that you see coherently, 3 00:00:34,899 --> 00:00:41,161 it makes it possible for you to enter into worlds, and places, and associations, 4 00:00:41,161 --> 00:00:43,975 that would otherwise be very difficult to do. 5 00:00:54,661 --> 00:00:57,292 Being a photographer is a wonderful thing, really. 6 00:01:02,070 --> 00:01:03,850 I'm not tied to any place. 7 00:01:04,831 --> 00:01:06,529 I can go and come as I like. 8 00:01:10,049 --> 00:01:10,549 It's wonderful. 9 00:01:14,141 --> 00:01:18,000 My childhood years in Johannesburg were very happy. 10 00:01:19,450 --> 00:01:21,627 We enjoyed an enormous amount of freedom. 11 00:01:22,909 --> 00:01:29,850 We would ride our bicycles all over the Randfontein Estates, which was the goldmine around the town, 12 00:01:30,479 --> 00:01:33,743 and we could explore the mines to a great degree. 13 00:01:36,207 --> 00:01:42,000 It's a brutal landscape, it's very bare, bleak, we don't have a sea, we don’t have a big river. 14 00:01:42,457 --> 00:01:46,590 We just had these rather dull and uninteresting spaces. 15 00:01:48,049 --> 00:01:52,804 I think there was a kind of osmosis taking place in me, 16 00:01:53,408 --> 00:01:56,509 I became organically related to the place. 17 00:01:59,626 --> 00:02:04,071 On the one hand, I want to photograph the land. 18 00:02:05,202 --> 00:02:08,163 Land, in a very broad sense. 19 00:02:09,153 --> 00:02:15,708 On the other hand, I'm fascinated by our structures as declarations of value. 20 00:02:21,214 --> 00:02:25,518 I'm too late for this photograph, the trees are already in leaf. 21 00:02:26,473 --> 00:02:27,404 I’m going to try. 22 00:02:27,404 --> 00:02:28,143 Let's have a look. 23 00:02:31,110 --> 00:02:36,918 It seems to me that the style of architecture that is emerging to the north of Johannesburg, 24 00:02:37,640 --> 00:02:40,587 is a kind of an aggressive materialism. 25 00:02:47,149 --> 00:02:53,970 In this country, because of the nakedness, almost, of the struggles that took place between 26 00:02:53,970 --> 00:02:55,400 black and white, 27 00:02:55,400 --> 00:03:02,391 the structures that emerged were amazingly clear demonstrations of value systems. 28 00:03:03,572 --> 00:03:07,882 White Afrikaner Protestant churches are those that I think of particularly. 29 00:03:09,341 --> 00:03:13,251 Their churches had these huge windows and this mega phonic structure, 30 00:03:14,168 --> 00:03:20,157 come the 1970s the forces of liberation are coming down to South Africa, 31 00:03:20,459 --> 00:03:23,830 increasingly impinging on Afrikaners. 32 00:03:25,188 --> 00:03:28,250 So, their new churches become defensive. 33 00:03:29,884 --> 00:03:33,464 There are very few of them built with piercings in the outer walls. 34 00:03:35,098 --> 00:03:40,714 Public structures become clear manifestations to self-image. 35 00:03:45,079 --> 00:03:51,129 Look at this, look at this, huge building, but at least this has got a certain amount 36 00:03:51,129 --> 00:03:53,240 of movement. 37 00:04:01,310 --> 00:04:02,952 That’s a Hasselblad. 38 00:04:04,109 --> 00:04:09,126 Famous, very expensive, beautifully built box. 39 00:04:10,459 --> 00:04:16,380 My brother Dan would come back from somewhere in the world and bring little miniature cameras. 40 00:04:17,235 --> 00:04:21,450 He brought back from one of his voyages a Contax camera. 41 00:04:21,450 --> 00:04:24,809 The Contax was the Zeiss equivalent of the Leica. 42 00:04:24,809 --> 00:04:29,770 It was a great camera, but this particular one had been severely damaged. 43 00:04:29,770 --> 00:04:33,510 I don't know what its history was during the war, but when it eventually reached Randfontein, 44 00:04:33,510 --> 00:04:38,376 it was a very sick camera, but I tried to do some photography with it. 45 00:04:39,709 --> 00:04:45,879 When I matriculated in '48, I certainly had a strong wish to become a magazine photographer. 46 00:04:46,507 --> 00:04:51,484 “Life” and “Look from America,” “Picture Post” from England were the 47 00:04:51,484 --> 00:04:54,100 window on the world for millions. 48 00:04:55,458 --> 00:05:04,600 In 1952, I think it was, the apartheid government had begun to put its ideology in place and 49 00:05:04,600 --> 00:05:10,620 one of the first steps was to separate the races in public amenities. 50 00:05:12,000 --> 00:05:19,340 I did a short strip of film of a black man going up and then being turned back by a black policeman. 51 00:05:19,692 --> 00:05:24,660 He had been accustomed to taking that route into the Johannesburg railway station and 52 00:05:24,660 --> 00:05:26,620 suddenly he was not allowed to. 53 00:05:26,620 --> 00:05:31,759 So I sent a strip of those photographs to “Picture Post” to the editor. 54 00:05:31,759 --> 00:05:33,477 I was politely rejected. 55 00:05:36,620 --> 00:05:42,440 I tried to do a magazine story about the men who worked on top of the mine dumps around 56 00:05:42,440 --> 00:05:43,776 our town. 57 00:05:45,000 --> 00:05:49,910 These men worked right through the year, every day and night, 58 00:05:49,910 --> 00:05:55,251 no matter what the conditions, dealing with the waste of the milling operation. 59 00:05:56,709 --> 00:06:00,000 We were subjecting these men to a terrible existence. 60 00:06:01,240 --> 00:06:03,878 It is freezing cold on the top of those dumps in winter. 61 00:06:07,498 --> 00:06:08,450 Here's an old dump. 62 00:06:09,707 --> 00:06:13,111 It's been covered in grass to keep down the dust. 63 00:06:16,430 --> 00:06:25,050 Black miners could not rise beyond the level of what were known as boss boys or team leaders. 64 00:06:26,458 --> 00:06:28,622 Of course, they were not boys, they were men. 65 00:06:30,910 --> 00:06:36,138 In order to rise above that level, you had to have a blasting certificate, 66 00:06:36,440 --> 00:06:41,460 and this was a method that was used by the white trade unions to ensure that 67 00:06:41,460 --> 00:06:47,374 only whites could go into the upper echelons of the mining hierarchy. 68 00:06:52,654 --> 00:06:54,900 If one wanted to look at this society, 69 00:06:54,900 --> 00:07:01,480 you had to grasp the nature of white Afrikaner life and ideology. 70 00:07:05,000 --> 00:07:13,500 The Afrikaners were descended from the Dutch and French Huguenot, and German, Scotch, early, 71 00:07:13,500 --> 00:07:15,900 early settlers in this country. 72 00:07:15,900 --> 00:07:21,430 Small as that group was, they determined a great deal of what happened here. 73 00:07:21,430 --> 00:07:30,780 For them, their conquest of the tribes that they encountered were guided by God, the ineffable. 74 00:07:31,459 --> 00:07:38,042 This became something that I had to deal with as I saw it in a way that hadn't been done before. 75 00:07:40,073 --> 00:07:47,243 During the 1930s, the right wing of Afrikaner movement known as the Ossewabrandwag was anti-Jewish. 76 00:07:48,449 --> 00:07:51,699 Like many of my fellow Jewish friends, 77 00:07:51,800 --> 00:07:57,694 I had a fear of Afrikaners from my childhood and yet felt the need to explore this. 78 00:07:59,353 --> 00:08:01,919 These people really absorbed me. 79 00:08:02,372 --> 00:08:06,918 They frightened me in their depths of the fear of black people, 80 00:08:06,918 --> 00:08:10,693 and yet at the same time their ease with them. 81 00:08:13,660 --> 00:08:18,158 I would be photographing an elderly couple on one of these plots 82 00:08:18,560 --> 00:08:23,770 and a little black girl would walk into the parlor, sucking her thumb 83 00:08:23,770 --> 00:08:29,250 and just stand there watching me work and they would not say a word to her. 84 00:08:29,250 --> 00:08:31,199 They didn't object and tell her to get out. 85 00:08:31,199 --> 00:08:34,334 It was just accepted that she would come in and do that. 86 00:08:37,955 --> 00:08:42,425 A common response from potential publishers was “where's the apartheid?” 87 00:08:43,305 --> 00:08:49,645 To me, it was embedded deep, deep, deep in the grain of those photographs. 88 00:08:51,053 --> 00:08:56,923 People overseas simply didn't grasp these extraordinary contradictions in our life. 89 00:08:57,778 --> 00:09:01,408 I was not interested in trying to explain things to them. 90 00:09:05,330 --> 00:09:07,519 We're heading into the center of Boksburg. 91 00:09:08,650 --> 00:09:12,860 I photographed here in the winter of ‘79 and again in ‘80. 92 00:09:14,620 --> 00:09:18,200 Instead of traveling the country and photographing whites generally, 93 00:09:18,200 --> 00:09:23,226 I wanted to concentrate on this one community and regard it as a microcosm of 94 00:09:23,226 --> 00:09:25,430 white middle class life in South Africa 95 00:09:25,430 --> 00:09:26,456 and that's what I did. 96 00:09:28,568 --> 00:09:32,690 This entire town was reserved for whites. 97 00:09:32,690 --> 00:09:37,841 Black people came here only if they had the right paper, a pass. 98 00:09:39,651 --> 00:09:44,780 I began to look at these crowds waiting at traffic lights to cross the road and found 99 00:09:44,780 --> 00:09:48,528 them remarkably exposing of us. 100 00:09:55,090 --> 00:09:56,790 Corner of Commissioner and Eloff. 101 00:09:56,790 --> 00:09:58,559 Oh, we must go up one block. 102 00:10:00,118 --> 00:10:06,708 This picture here was taken from where I'm standing now, of that shop there, 103 00:10:08,493 --> 00:10:12,000 and I was probably standing here when I took this picture. 104 00:10:14,620 --> 00:10:20,060 I was excited by this winter light that we have, it’s very sharp and low angled. 105 00:10:21,493 --> 00:10:27,643 These low buildings were to me, the quintessence of the world that I knew and grew up in. 106 00:10:28,348 --> 00:10:30,502 There's nothing distinctive about them. 107 00:10:33,720 --> 00:10:38,300 I don't think there is a single picture in that whole collection in which the subject 108 00:10:38,300 --> 00:10:39,999 is looking at the camera or me. 109 00:10:41,860 --> 00:10:44,159 I wanted to disappear from the equation. 110 00:10:46,497 --> 00:10:52,491 In Soweto and Hillbrow, the photographs were encounters between myself and the subject. 111 00:10:54,678 --> 00:10:58,990 Instead of trying to photograph life as an ongoing process. 112 00:10:58,990 --> 00:11:03,159 I elected to photograph people as they were in a formal way. 113 00:11:05,120 --> 00:11:09,586 I was always insistent that the subject would look at me, not at the camera. 114 00:11:13,810 --> 00:11:15,250 In doing those portraits., 115 00:11:15,250 --> 00:11:19,461 I became aware of people's bodies in a very emphatic way. 116 00:11:20,190 --> 00:11:26,374 Arms, and limbs, breasts, hips, necks, particulars. 117 00:11:30,824 --> 00:11:34,850 Here is a whole drawer of four by fives. 118 00:11:36,887 --> 00:11:43,381 On my death, my negatives, my contact prints, and my working prints, would have gone to 119 00:11:43,381 --> 00:11:44,500 the University of Cape Town 120 00:11:44,500 --> 00:11:50,596 where they had established an archival facility for this purpose. 121 00:11:52,306 --> 00:11:57,620 But after the burning of paintings and the burning of some photographs by the students 122 00:11:57,620 --> 00:12:00,220 in the university art collection, 123 00:12:00,220 --> 00:12:05,889 the university appointed a committee of academics and students to examine every piece of art 124 00:12:06,895 --> 00:12:08,329 with a view to deciding 125 00:12:08,329 --> 00:12:15,490 whether to pulling out or covering up any artwork that they regarded as potentially 126 00:12:15,490 --> 00:12:17,015 offensive to black students. 127 00:12:19,554 --> 00:12:28,042 Well, I can't accept that kind of valuation and interference in the freedom of expression. 128 00:12:29,515 --> 00:12:34,167 If there are pieces of work in the art collection that perhaps make other people uncomfortable, 129 00:12:34,167 --> 00:12:37,000 then let’s exhibit them, hold debates. 130 00:12:40,126 --> 00:12:44,250 I regard my work as one thing that I will not allow to be compromised, 131 00:12:44,250 --> 00:12:46,500 and I compromise every day, 132 00:12:46,500 --> 00:12:48,480 just by drawing breath in this country. 133 00:12:50,466 --> 00:12:54,679 But today under a democracy, I refuse to be complicit. 134 00:12:57,244 --> 00:12:59,061 I canceled my contract. 135 00:13:00,795 --> 00:13:03,897 And my stuff won't go to the University of Cape Town. 136 00:13:12,320 --> 00:13:15,189 I don't think I've ever been bored with photography. 137 00:13:16,949 --> 00:13:19,279 I have sometimes become extremely frustrated 138 00:13:19,279 --> 00:13:20,681 Ahh [bleeped]. 139 00:13:20,681 --> 00:13:21,626 Disgusted. 140 00:13:21,626 --> 00:13:22,279 Look at this. 141 00:13:22,279 --> 00:13:23,279 Look at this. 142 00:13:23,279 --> 00:13:25,839 but it's a life absorbing process. 143 00:13:26,518 --> 00:13:28,649 It absorbs me fully. 144 00:13:30,560 --> 00:13:35,543 I've changed my mind about photographs 25, 30 years after I've taken them. 145 00:13:37,360 --> 00:13:41,310 My problem is that I don't have 25 or 30 years to make up my mind now. 146 00:13:42,000 --> 00:13:44,207 I've got to make up my mind much sooner. 147 00:13:53,610 --> 00:13:56,365 I was doing photographs of the goldmines, 148 00:13:56,365 --> 00:13:59,377 and I saw a reflection of myself, 149 00:14:00,332 --> 00:14:04,584 so I just snapped it.