David Goldblatt spent his life documenting apartheid in South Africa. While many photographers chased mass demonstrations and violent rebellions, Goldblatt instead focused on the cultural values that led to more than 40 years of repression.

Goldblatt's photography provides a rare insight and historical documentation of daily life during the apartheid era. Born to Jewish parents in a gold mining town outside Johannesburg, Goldblatt was shocked when apartheid began to take hold in the late 1940s. Photography became his main outlet for questioning and investigating what was happening in country during this time, and he published a number of photography books about the cultural groups responsible for and affected by apartheid in South Africa.

In his early essays, including Some Afrikaners, In Boksburg and On the Mines, Goldblatt photographed white and Afrikaner communities. The projects portrayed these communities as the support base for apartheid as much as they sought to create a sense of empathy and understanding.

After being honored by the International Center of Photography for Lifetime Achievement, Goldblatt shares the stories behind his books.

Webby
Year: 2014
Place: Winner
Category: Documentary: Series

NPPA's Best of Photojournalism
Year: 2014
Place: Honorable Mention
Category: Visual Column

Since 1985, the International Center of Photography has recognized outstanding achievements in photography with its prestigious Infinity Awards. The awards ceremony is also ICP’s primary fundraising benefit, with its revenues assisting the center's various programs.

Harbers Studios commissioned MediaStorm, on behalf of ICP, to create a short film about each of the recipients to screen at the awards ceremony and to later remain online. The films serve as an introduction of the recipients to the audience as well as a showcase of their work, highlighting the motivations for honoring them with Infinity Awards.

Anytime you are working with a photographer’s entire body of work it can be a challenge. For this project, David Goldblatt was being honored for Lifetime Achievement, and our goal was for the video to reflect his life’s work. However it became evident while building the narrative that the piece should primarily focus on apartheid. This meant leaving out much of Goldblatt’s later work, including Ex-Offenders.

We worked with Goldblatt to see what he thought of our apartheid-focused roughcut. While he liked the apartheid sections of the video, he requested that we include some of his later, non-apartheid essays. We discussed this option via Skype (Goldblatt was in South Africa at the time of production), and we formulated a way to include Intersections Intersected and The Structure of Things Then.

MediaStorm interviewed the recipients and gathered images to create stories about each of their careers. The resulting eight short films serve individually as biographical glimpses into the recipients’ work and collectively as a portrait of some of the important contributors to photography today.

This film was a collaboration with Harbers Studio and the International Center of Photography.

Harbers Studios turbocharges the efforts of charitable entrepreneurs by helping them tell their stories. Our goal is to help them articulate and share the value of the work they do so they can inspire others to help them do it. Working with some of the best filmmaking talent in the world, we create compelling visual narratives that enhance the endeavors of organizations working to make the world a better place.

The International Center of Photography (ICP) is the world’s leading institution dedicated to the practice and understanding of photography and the reproduced image in all its forms. Through our exhibitions, educational programs, and community outreach, we offer an open forum for dialogue about the role images play in our culture. Since our founding, we have presented more than 500 exhibitions and offered thousands of classes, providing instruction at every level. ICP is a center where photographers and artists, students and scholars can create and interpret the world of the image within our comprehensive educational facilities and archive.

As a privately funded nonprofit arts and education organization, ICP depends in large part on friends such as you for support. Your generosity is vital to ICP as it continues to grow and succeed in its mission: to present photography's extraordinary power to the public.

There are many ways to give to ICP: Donate to the Annual Fund, create a scholarship, sponsor exhibitions and education programs, contribute to the Collection, or make a planned gift.

Since 1985, the International Center of Photography has recognized outstanding achievements in photography with its prestigious Infinity Awards. The awards ceremony is also ICP’s primary fundraising benefit, with its revenues assisting the center's various programs.

Harbers Studios commissioned MediaStorm, on behalf of ICP, to create a short film about each of the recipients to screen at the awards ceremony and to display online. The films pay tribute to the contributions of each artist to the craft and field of photography and demonstrate ICP's commitment to them.