On the Mines is a re-designed and expanded version of David Goldblatt’s influential book of 1973. Goldblatt grew up
in the South African town of Randfontein, which was shaped by the social culture and financial success of the gold mines
surrounding it. When these mines started to fail in the mid-sixties Goldblatt began taking photos of them, which form
the basis of On the Mines. The book features an essay on the human and political dimensions of mining in South Africa
by Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer, whose writing has long influenced Goldblatt.
The new version of the book maintains the original three chapters “The Witwatersrand: a Time and Tailings”,
“Shaftsinking” and “Mining Men”, but is otherwise completely updated, in Goldblatt’s words, “to expand the view but
not to alter the sense of things”. There are thirty-one new mostly unpublished photos including colour images, eleven
deleted images, a postscript by Gordimer to her essay, as well as a text by Goldblatt reflecting on his childhood and
the 1973 book. On the Mines is the first of many titles in an ambitious collaboration between the photographer and Steidl
that will publish Goldblatt’s life work in a series of re-prints and new books.
David Goldblatt is a definitive photographer of his generation, esteemed for his dispassionate depiction of life in South
Africa over a period of more than fifty years. Born in Randfontein in 1930, Goldblatt worked in his father’s menswear
business until 1963 when he took up photography full time. Goldblatt’s work concerns above all human values and is
a unique document of life during and after apartheid. His photographs are held in major international collections, and
his solo exhibitions include those at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1998, and the Fondation Henri Cartier-
Bresson in Paris in 2011. In 1989 Goldblatt founded the Market Photo Workshop in Johannesburg to teach visual
literacy and photography especially to those disadvantaged by apartheid.
On the Mines
von David Goldblatt
