Photograph, gelatin silver print on paper
Tate Collection
Works with images
General Collection
Tate American Fund
Collection
<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/david-goldblatt-6558" aria-label="More by David Goldblatt" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">David Goldblatt</a>
Woman on a Bench Joubert Park Johannesburg
Presented by the American Fund for the Tate Gallery, courtesy of Carolyn Alexander 2017
actions: postures and motions
adults
architecture
bench
cities, towns, villages (non-UK)
civil and human rights: South Africa, Apartheid, 1948-1994
class
clothing and personal items
countries and continents
emotions, concepts and ideas
formal qualities
furnishings
garden structures
hands clasped
history
Johannesburg, Joubert Park
legs crossed
objects
park
people
photographic
places
politics and society
race
sandal
sitting
social comment
society
South Africa
woman
<p><span>Woman on a Bench, Joubert Park, Johannesburg</span> 1975 is from David Goldblatt’s <span>Particulars </span>series, which consists of twenty-seven black and white photographs of bodily details taken in the artist’s native South Africa. In this image an anonymous woman in a knee-length skirt, cardigan and white sandals, sits on a park bench, her legs awkwardly crossed, her wedding ring barely visible under tightly clenched hands. As is routine in this series, the sitter’s head is cropped out of the frame, as Goldblatt hones in on a detail of their body, a voluptuous thigh, gnarled hand or particular pose. Despite the tight framing and simple factual titles, the details present in each image go some way towards suggesting the race, class and personal circumstances of the subjects, as well as the time and place in which the photographs were taken.</p>
paper print photograph gelatin silver
1 August 2019 – 9 May 2021
2021-05-09
1 August 2019 – 9 May 2021
2021-05-09
2019-08-01
Tate Modern (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/
2019-08-01
David Goldblatt
Collection based display
Woman on a Bench, Joubert Park, Johannesburg
image: 365 × 374 mm
support: 439 × 406 mm
Presented by the <a href="/search?gid=999999976" data-gtm-name="tombstone_link_bequest" data-gtm-destination="list-page--search-results">American Fund for the Tate Gallery</a>, courtesy of Carolyn Alexander 2017
<div class="text">
<p>
<i>Woman on a Bench, Joubert Park, Johannesburg</i> 1975 is from David Goldblatt’s <i>Particulars </i>series, which consists of twenty-seven black and white photographs of bodily details taken in the artist’s native South Africa. In this image an anonymous woman in a knee-length skirt, cardigan and white sandals, sits on a park bench, her legs awkwardly crossed, her wedding ring barely visible under tightly clenched hands. As is routine in this series, the sitter’s head is cropped out of the frame, as Goldblatt hones in on a detail of their body, a voluptuous thigh, gnarled hand or particular pose. Despite the tight framing and simple factual titles, the details present in each image go some way towards suggesting the race, class and personal circumstances of the subjects, as well as the time and place in which the photographs were taken.</p>
<p>Goldblatt has explained that he ‘acquired a consciousness of bodily particulars that was technical rather than subjective’ through working in his father’s shop, a men’s outfitters in Randfontein on the outskirts of Johannesburg (Goldblatt 2003, unpaginated). After his father’s death in 1962, he sold the business and became a photographer, by which time he had developed an acute awareness of the body, which although most notable in the <i>Particulars</i> series, can be discerned in other works such as <i>Boss Boy</i> 1966 from the series <i>On the Mines</i>.</p>
<p>All but three of the photographs in <i>Particulars </i>were taken in 1975, the same year Goldblatt published his seminal book <i>Some Afrikaners Photographed</i> and a year before the Soweto Uprising, which led to increased levels of violence and repression in South Africa. While other South African photographers documented the anti-Apartheid struggle, Goldblatt sought to explore ‘the values and conditions that gave rise to the events’, rather than the events themselves (quoted in Goldblatt and Parr 2006, p.234). Though his subjects might have seemed only distantly or obliquely related to the vital questions the country was facing, to Goldblatt they were extremely apposite. He has stated: ‘What I have attempted over the years has been a photography that would discover, probe, reveal, clarify, question those values.’ (Goldblatt 2002, p.22.)</p>
<p>In <i>Particulars </i>Goldblatt provides a sensual reading of the body, regardless of whether the subjects are black or white, rich or poor, as ‘affirmations and embodiments of their selves’ (Goldblatt 2003, unpaginated.) Although he published a few photographs from <i>Particulars</i> earlier, it was only in 2004, a decade after South Africa’s first democratic elections, that a book of the photographs became possible.</p>
<p>This copy of <i>Woman on a Bench, Joubert Park, Johannesburg</i> was printed in 2001 in an open edition.</p>
<p>
<b>Further reading</b>
<br/>David Goldblatt, <i>David Goldblatt: Fifty-One Years</i>, Barcelona 2002.<br/>David Goldblatt, <i>Particulars</i>, Johannesburg 2003, reproduced pl.22.<br/>David Goldblatt and Martin Parr,<i> David Goldblatt Photographs</i>, Rome 2006, reproduced p.81.</p>
<p>Kerryn Greenberg<br/>November 2011</p>
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Summary
2013-10-30T00:00:00
summary
SHORT_TEXT
actions: postures and motions adults architecture bench cities, towns, villages (non-UK) civil and human rights: South Africa, Apartheid, 1948-1994 class clothing and personal items countries and continents emotions, concepts and ideas formal qualities furnishings garden structures hands clasped history Johannesburg, Joubert Park legs crossed objects park people photographic places politics and society race sandal sitting social comment society South Africa woman