Wander through oeuvre with ‘new eyes’
‘Picture Theory’ is an interaction with the work of photographer David Goldblatt
PICTURE Theory explores the work of David Goldblatt (1930 – 2018) through an exhibition of his photographic prints, the film Goldblatt (2017), a selection of texts, workshops, seminars, residencies, and a reading room.
A social-cartographer, Goldblatt’s work spanned 60 years of vigilant looking, learning and sharing through photography.
Woven through the resulting photographic resource, and importantly in the texts and interviews offered by Goldblatt as companions, is an indirect portrait of the photographer himself:
“I wasn’t on the scene at the riots and the focal points of political life and I gradually realised that events themselves were, for me, much less interesting than the conditions that lead to events. I was looking obliquely at things,”Goldblatt once said.
What is it to look obliquely? And what are the possibilities of such a practice?
Picture Theory deviates from the convention of presenting Goldblatt’s images within their original essays or bodies of work. Instead, the project uncouples images from their chronological and contextual sources, seeking unexpected connections that span decades and series.
“If when thinking, we yield too freely to the natural combinations of forms of understanding and of reason, then our concepts stick so much to others that they can’t unite with those to which they really belong. We must deliberately bring things into contact with each other. We must experiment with ideas.” – Georg Lichtenberg
It is in this spirit of experimentation that Picture Theory proceeds, seeking new intersections, thoroughfares and tangents with which to view Goldblatt’s project: a longing for rootedness to the land, a quest to delineate the values that underlie human connection, and an insatiable aspiration to marry the poetic and the political in a single image.
In 2015, director Daniel Zimbler and I set out to make a film on David that could offer an intimate view into his practice. It was a daunting task, to represent a master of the lens, through the lens. But David softened that challenge. He was remarkably generous with his time and thoughts, offering complete on-the-record access, staying clear of editorial influence and retaining an indifference toward the film’s form. He was an ideal subject.
During our time with him – whether in his home in Joburg, in the Karoo in search of a picture, in his camper somewhere on the N1, or installing an exhibition – our aim was to find the impetus behind his projects, the pressures that shaped them and the idiosyncrasies of his various processes.
We also wanted to know what was missing: what were the photographs he had not yet taken? What did he still wish to accomplish? What was desired relative to what was demanded?
David’s recent passing brings these questions to the fore in a different way. Rather than asking what is missing, perhaps more pertinent is asking what have we missed? What were we not able to see that, perhaps now, we can. What new lessons are possible now that his archive is complete?
David spoke regularly of his desire to “have new eyes”: to see beyond the bounds of his accrued knowledge and experience. Picture Theory is an attempt to bring “new eyes” to Goldblatt’s oeuvre; offering space to wander through the photographs, as one would a landscape, seeking out resonances that might compel one to stop and to “make a picture”.
I’m not sure what David would say about this experiment. I’d hope it would be something similar to his remark following the premier screening of the film: “I don’t not like it.”
I realised that events themselves were, for me, much less interesting than the conditions that lead to events
David Goldblatt
Picture Theory opened yesterday at A4 Arts Foundation, 23 Buitenkant Street in the CBD.