David Goldblatt was born on November29 1930 in Randfontein. The grandson of Lithuanian Jewish immigrants who came to SA to escape persecution in the 1890s, his interest in photography was sparked by his mother giving him a camera, after matriculating in 1948. Goldblatt, who died on Monday, set his sights on a career in photojournalism and began to photograph the unfolding campaigns mounted by the Congress Alliance, but soon found news photography unrewarding. Perhaps he was unsuited to its pace.
When his father became ill with cancer he had to take over his men’s outfitting business, and registered for a Bachelor of Commerce degree part-time. He continued to take photographs in his spare time and was by now married to Lily, with three children. When his father died in 1963, Goldblatt, aged 33, began working as a full-time professional photographer. Over the next several decades he would come to focus his camera on the quiet, poignant features of the brutal apartheid regime. "D...
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