Margaret Mcingana who later became famous as the singer Margaret Singana, Zola, Soweto

Artwork: David Goldblatt, Margaret Mcingana who later became famous as the singer Margaret Singana, Zola, Soweto (1970). Silver gelatin print on fibre-based paper. 51 x 40.5 cm. Courtesy of Michael Stevenson .

Details

Artist David Goldblatt Title Margaret Mcingana who later became famous as the singer Margaret Singana, Zola, Soweto Date 1970 Materials Silver gelatin print on fibre-based paper Dimensions 51 x 40.5 cm Credit Courtesy of Michael Stevenson

This photograph is included in Lifetimes Under Apartheid, 1986; Fifty-one Years, 2001; Kith Kin & Khaya, 2011; TJ, 2011; The Pursuit of Values, 2015; and Structures of Dominion and Democracy, 2018.

About the artist

b.1930, Randfontein; d.2018, Johannesburg

“I was drawn,” the late photographer David Goldblatt wrote, “not to the events of the time but to the quiet and commonplace where nothing ‘happened’ and yet all was contained and immanent.” A preeminent chronicler of South African life under apartheid and after, Goldblatt bore witness to how this life is written on the land, in its structures or their absence. Unconcerned with documenting significant historic moments, his photographs stand outside the events of the time and yet are eloquent of them. Through Goldblatt’s lens, the prosaic reveals a telling poignancy. Even in those images that appear benign, much is latent in them – histories and politics, desires and dread. His photographs are quietly critical reflections on the values and conditions that have shaped the country; those structures both ideological and tangible. Among his most notable photobooks are On the Mines (1973), Some Afrikaners Photographed (1975), In Boksburg (1982), The Structure of Things Then (1998), and Particulars (2003).

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