The Easel

Archives: Mark Feeney

8th April 2025

At Yale, a David Goldblatt retrospective bears eloquent witness to apartheid-era South Africa and beyond

Goldblatt photographed apartheid-era South African society. In doing so, he “bore witness” with distinction. His interest was in the commonplace – churches, mines, people at home and in the street – where “nothing ‘happened and yet all was contained”. Combining a humanist outlook with “visual simplicity”, he articulated the moral dilemmas that attended daily life under apartheid. Goldblatt’s images, says the writer, are “eloquence of a very high order”. Gushes another, his work is “magisterial”.