David Goldblatt: The Last Interview

Accompanied by a selection of some of David Goldblatt’s (1930–2018) lesser-known photographs, this distilled dialogue is drawn directly from the recordings of a roving conversation with the photographer conducted three months before his death in June 2018. Goldblatt was born in Randfontein―a mining town on the Witwatersrand gold reef―in 1930, the grandson of Lithuanian-Jewish migrants who settled in South Africa after escaping persecution in Europe. After the death of his father in 1962, Goldblatt sold the family clothing business to become a full-time photographer. In this candid conversation with writer Alexandra Dodd, Goldblatt shares his views about land and landscape, the dangerous lure of repetition in portrait photography, Johannesburg, the solipsism of life as a photographer, staying sharp, his visceral intolerance of censorship, his abiding interest in structures and his observation of instances of dominion under democracy, among other key themes.