Arriving Family, King George Street, Johannesburg

David Goldblatt

1950–1960

Photograph of man, woman, and child walking down city street with high-rise building and two rickshaws in background.
In this photograph, David Goldblatt captured a Black family newly arrived in Johannesburg, looking small and vulnerable as they pass the tall pole of a streetlamp, with massive buildings looming behind them. Goldblatt dedicated much of his work to documenting racial injustice in South Africa. He also had a great interest in buildings and how they interacted with both the physical and political landscape.

Credits

Photograph by David Goldblatt.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 9.

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Creator Bio

David Goldblatt

1930–2018
David Goldblatt photographed and documented South African society for more than fifty years. Of Lithuanian Jewish heritage, Goldblatt was born in Randfontein. He began photographing professionally in the early 1960s, focusing on the effects of the National Party’s legislation of apartheid. Over the years, he chronicled the plight of black communities, the culture of the Afrikaner nationalists, and the comfort of white suburbanites, as well as the condition of race relations in the country after the end of apartheid. Goldblatt received the Hasselblad Photography Award (2006) and the Henri-Cartier Bresson Award (2009).

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