David Goldblatt’s Prophetic Photographs at Tate Modern

This story was first published in Coronadiet’s old site on March 28, 2020.

After nearly three years since my last visit to London and Tate Modern, I’ve made my return via the museum’s website of virtual galleries. In the Natalie Bell Building on Level 2 West, Tate’s Artist and Society wing contains 13 rooms exploring works by artists who engage with their respectively unique social and political contexts. I make a vertical scroll through the page, my eyes landing on Room 4 which exhibits South African photographer David Goldblatt’s black and white photographs from the 20th century. Goldblatt describes himself as a “self-appointed observer and critic of the society into which [he] was born,’ focusing not on explicit scenes of protests and violence but “the values and conditions that gave rise to [those] events.” While Goldblatt’s career has spanned decades, his work remains relevant even to Tate’s current virtual audience.

Child Minder, Woman Resting on her Way to Work, and Blanketed Man at the Trading Store were captured in 1975 Johannesburg and Transkei, but the tension that comes through the images is emblematic of current mental states. Goldblatt positions his anonymous subjects tightly into their frames, but allows plenty of room for one thing: their hands. His focus mirrors precisely the hyperawareness that’s placed on hands during the present time of the Covid-19 pandemic. As if that’s not prophetic enough, the exhibit concludes with eerie, isolated landscapes that could pass as weeks-old photos taken during the pinnacle of recent lockdowns throughout the world. The identities of people and places that Goldblatt captures are established by both the presence and absence of what’s shown — the very characteristic that makes up his mutedly loud visual language.

https://www.tate.org.uk/visit/tate-modern/display/artist-and-society/david-goldblatt