David Goldblatt: Fragments of Fietas
From 1948 to 2016, celebrated South African photographer David Goldblatt repeatedly visited Fietas, a neighborhood just west of central Johannesburg, to document the human and architectural consequences of apartheid’s racial engineering. Once a vibrant hub, largely home to Indian families, shopkeepers, and entrepreneurs, Fietas was targeted for forced removals under the Group Areas Act—a devastating policy of spatial segregation.
Drawn by the resilience and spirit of the community, Goldblatt set out to capture the essence of what its residents had created. This volume gathers these photographs for the first time, presenting a compelling visual chronicle of Fietas before, during, and after its destruction. Early images of lively storefronts and intimate interiors stand in stark contrast to later scenes of abandonment and demolition from the late 1970s onward. Portraits of traders in their shops reveal quiet dignity and steadfastness in the face of erasure.
The book closes with interviews from former and current residents, echoing the testimonial approach of Goldblatt’s earlier projects such as The Transported of Kwandebele and Ex-Offenders at the Scene of Crime. These voices, paired with the images, create a powerful dialogue between photographer and subject—preserving the layered history of a multiracial community that defied apartheid’s rigid boundaries.
An essay by Professor Ashwin Desai situates Fietas within the broader narrative of South Africa’s Indian population and the enduring legacies of racist state policy, offering crucial context to this deeply moving record of resistance, memory, and loss.
About the Author
David Goldblatt (1930–2018) was born in Randfontein, a mining town just outside Johannesburg, South Africa. Over the course of seven decades, he used photography as a powerful tool to document the people, environments, and social architecture of South Africa. From the start of apartheid in 1948 until his death in 2018, Goldblatt produced a body of work that examined both the public and private dimensions of life under one of the most oppressive regimes of the 20th century.
His images—subtle yet incisive—captured not only the daily realities of apartheid but also the physical spaces it shaped: the homes, streets, workplaces, and monuments that embodied the ideology of segregation. Goldblatt was especially drawn to the Witwatersrand region, where he grew up, portraying its landscapes, people, and mining-driven economy. He believed that architecture could reveal the values of a society, and his photographs of colonial-era buildings reflect this conviction.
Goldblatt’s approach combined artistry with a rigorous documentary method. He was known for the detailed captions accompanying his photographs, identifying not only subjects and locations but also the social context. These captions became an integral part of the work—highlighting the often unseen forces that influenced life in South Africa, particularly those related to race, gender, labor, and mobility.
In 1989, Goldblatt founded the Market Photo Workshop in Johannesburg, an institution dedicated to training young photographers, many from disadvantaged backgrounds. His international recognition grew steadily: in 1998, he became the first South African artist to be given a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Today, the David Goldblatt Archive is housed at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.
His career was celebrated with several major retrospectives, including “David Goldblatt: Fifty-One Years” (2001) and “David Goldblatt: No Ulterior Motive at the AIC” (2018), a comprehensive traveling exhibition that spans his early black-and-white work to later color photography from post-apartheid South Africa. The exhibition features around 150 photographs drawn from the Yale University Art Gallery and the Art Institute of Chicago, two of the most significant holdings of his work.
Goldblatt received numerous international honors, including the 2006 Hasselblad Award, the 2009 Henri Cartier-Bresson Award, the 2013 ICP Infinity Award, and in 2016 was named Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture.
He participated in several prominent exhibitions and biennials, such as ILLUMInations at the 54th Venice Biennale (2011); South Africa in Apartheid and After at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2013); Everything Was Moving at the Barbican Centre, London (2012); as well as shows at the Jewish Museum (2010) and New Museum (2009) in New York.
Goldblatt’s photographs are held in the collections of major art institutions worldwide, including:
MoMA and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; SFMOMA; Tate Modern and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; The Getty Museum, Los Angeles; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; The Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Huis Marseille, Amsterdam; Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Art Institute of Chicago; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Musée de l’Élysée, Lausanne; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid; LACMA, Los Angeles; and many others, including leading institutions in South Africa.
