David Goldblatt (I): "I am not an activist. I very seldom take an active stand on something."

“I’ve always said quite explicitly that I can never deny my complicity in the South African scene during apartheid because to draw breath here—just to draw breath—you became complicit. There was no aspect of life in South Africa that was not pervasively penetrated by apartheid. No life, and no aspect of life.”

David Goldblatt (photographer, 1930-2018)

“I was asking myself how it was possible to be so apparently normal, moral, upright – which almost all those citizens were – in such an appallingly abnormal, immoral, bizarre situation. I hoped we would see ourselves revealed by a mirror held up to ourselves.”

David Goldblatt

“During those years, colour seemed too sweet a medium to express the anger, disgust and fear that apartheid inspired.”

David Goldblatt

photographs by David Goldblatt via and via and via and via and via