David Goldblatt was a South African photographer, considered to be one of the most important exponents in the renewal of documentary photography since the 1970s. He first became interested in photography at school, but because of his family's financial situation, he had to work in the family business while studying commerce at the University of the Witwatersrand. From his earliest work, Goldblatt focused on the contradictions and complexities in South African society, depicting everyday life as a reflection of social structures. His work developed in parallel with the country's historical, political, social and economic evolution, beginning with his reflections on the apartheid regime in the series Soweto (1972-1973) and On the Mines (1973), published as a book (Particulars (1975)), in collaboration with Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer and culminating with South Africa: The Structure of Things Then (1998), a book compiling fifteen years of photographic investigation. His later work, after he began using colour in 1999, addressed the new post-apartheid social situation and the mechanisms of integration of the black population, as well as the problem of AIDS, in series such as In the Time of AIDS (2007).

His work has been shown at major international events, including Documenta 11 and 12 (Kassel, Germany, 2001 and 2007) and the Venice Biennale (2011). He has also been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions, including one at the Museum of Modern Art (New York, 1998); an important retrospective organised by the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art (2002), which toured various centres around the world between 2002 and 2005; and others at the Stiftung Museum Kunstpalast (Düsseldorf, Germany, 2005); the Fotomuseum Winterthur (Switzerland, 2007); the Fundação Serralves (Porto, Portugal, 2008); and the New Museum (New York, 2009). He has won numerous prestigious international photography awards from Hasselblad (2006), Henri Cartier-Bresson (2009) and the International Center of Photography (2013).

Roberto Díaz