David Goldblatt
Hasselblad Award Winner 2006
Hasselblad Center is pleased to present this year’s Hasselblad Award Winner the South African photographer David Goldblatt in first-ever solo exhibition in Scandinavia.
David Goldblatt is one of the most important and influential photographers in the history of South Africa. With his critical gaze he has succeeded in creating an image of the social and political changes taking place in the country over half a century. In his pictures Goldblatt has depicted the reality of South Africa and created testimony to the everyday life of his compatriots.
David Goldblatt was born in 1930 in Randfontein, a gold mining town near Johannesburg. He became interested in photography at high school and dreamed of becoming a magazine photographer. In 1963, following his father’s death, he sold the family business and devoted himself fully to photography. Most of Goldblatt’s personal work has consisted of photographic essays in which he has critically observed some of the conditions and values underlying South African society, both under apartheid and since its demise and the birth of democracy.
