Entries (RSS) South Africa: The Structure Of Things Then
“For most of the century we have considered the art of architecture to be fundamentally a formal matter (especially when we have talked of functionalism). In his highly intelligent new book on the built-culture of South Africa during Apartheid, David Goldblatt considers architecture – professional and vernacular – for its content. The result is deeply fascinating, and a revelation.” John Szarkowski David Goldblatt’s work is about buildings and structures in the South African landscape. It is, in part, about actual structures – bricks, mortar, mud, and corrugated iron. But it is also about ideological structuring: about the mental constructs that underpinned the structures of South Africa in its colonial era and more spesifically, the apartheid years, the locust years, of its recent past. What Goldblatt has done is to frame these physical structures in terms of photographic construct which, cumulatively and compellingly, reveal the many ways in which ideology has shaped our landscape. |
