David Goldblatt's Dual Vision: Apartheid's Body and Landscape

Galerie Marian Goodman in Paris presents a David Goldblatt exhibition from May 4 to June 26, 2007, featuring two distinct sections. The first, 'Particulars,' comprises 27 black-and-white photographs from 1975 showing fragmented body parts—worn hands, a sleeping baby's buttocks, a woman's nipple—that evoke a paradoxical empathy, moving from the vernacular to the universal. The second section, in color, depicts contemporary South African landscapes devoid of people: waiting rooms, unfinished housing estates, suburban streets. Goldblatt, born in 1930 in Randfontein to Lithuanian Jewish parents, began his career as apartheid took hold. He documented both Black life in townships and mines and the lives of white conservatives, avoiding stereotypes and earning late recognition, especially in the US, where civil rights advocates found no expected clichés. His work was previously featured in the global retrospective 'David Goldblatt Fifty One Years' (2001-2003) curated by Corinne Diserens and Okwui Enwezor, and celebrated at the Rencontres d'Arles in 2003.