Saturday 24 December 2022

David Goldblatt (II): Particulars

In 1975, David Goldblatt discovered his fascination for details of people's bodies and for six months continued to pphotograph these very details - placement of hands, ears, arrangement of limbs. It was the body language he wanted to capture, the clothing, the decoration with which we often declare our values, he said (via).


‘There is the surface. Now think – or rather feel, intuit – what is beyond it, what the reality must be like if it looks this way.’” As I study the faces, the familiar landmarks and everyday scenes, I search for their meaning, trying, like Goldblatt, to understand. The series Particulars, where Goldblatt captures close-ups of a subject’s hands, their knees, their ears, stands out for me. As I look at them, I imagine him asking: “Where in the body does hate live? Where does love live?”


“I was always struck by the need to make photographs that were somehow relevant to our society, to our situation in dealing with apartheid and the opposition to it. But I wanted somehow to be free just to photograph the things that I found beautiful.”


photographs via and via and via and via

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