A Salute to the Masters: Hands (A Tribute to David Goldblatt)

South African photographer David Goldblatt is famous for his reportage during the apartheid. In 1975 he started an original series depicting detailed photographs of body parts which were published in the book, “Particulars.” As a tribute to this great artist, I’ll show you a series of close-up photographs of hands. Stay tuned!

The South African photographer *David Goldblatt* was born in 1930 in Randfontein. After completing a degree in Commerce at the university in 1948, he began his photography career and documented the history of South Africa from the period of the apartheid up to the present – a very important social work.

As a social documentary photographer, Goldblatt is interested in life and working conditions all over the world. Among his other excellent work is a series documenting the life of blue asbestos miners in Australia, the effects of which were disease and death.

Goldblatt’s most important book published in 1998 is “South Africa: The Structure of Things Then.” Here, he depicted buildings and structures such as churches, monuments, private homes, and servants’ quarters as symbols of the conditions that created them.

Another great book by Goldblatt is “Particulars”, which included close-up photographs of his subjects’ body parts, which were considered affirmations or embodiment of themselves. But before that, he worked on a series of portraits of his compatriots in Soweto and in the suburbs of Johannesburg for five years.

Here is a nice, detailed photograph of hands, while here is a close-up shot of feet. Studying body language, Goldblatt masterfully photographed two women at play during their lunch hour here. You can see more photos of this great photographer on the Goodman Gallery.

For this tribute, I chose photos of hands that I have taken in the last four years. The first part of the series is dedicated to students’ hands (I’m a teacher and I documented part of their lives at school), while the second part is dedicated to adults’ hands.

The first photo in this article shows a student assembling a Lomography Konstruktor at Como’s main square during the Creativity Day. It is followed by a set of photographs of hands while writing taken in a classroom, and by another set of students’ hands as they built a mini slingshot carousel. The last image was taken during a chess match.

The photo above was taken during the cattle exposition at the Patron Feast in my city, Como, while the next two images depict the creative hands of the Schignano artisans while creating original carnival masks out of a tree trunk.

In the two images below, you can see the hands of some volunteers who removed graffiti from the city walls.

After these two photos of a street musician, I’ll show you a set of images taken at sporting events.

Here is a photo of a couple who was trying to learn how to skating on ice hand in hand!

Here are images of the Rugby Como team – one taken during half time, and the other during the after party in which both teams ate and drank together.

The last two photos depict archery and were taken during a public demonstration at Como’s main park.

A Salute to the Masters is a series dedicated to great photographers that I like. I posted other tributes for Walker Evans, Lee Friedlander, Helen Levitt, Ernst Haas, Stephen Shore, Gabriele Basilico, Robert Adams, Thomas Struth, J.H. Lartigue, Elliott Erwitt, Robert Frank, Gianni Berengo Gardin, André Kertész, Willy Ronis, Brassaï, Rodchenko, Dan Graham, Henry Grant, William Eggleston, Dennis Stock, Juergen Teller, Martin Parr, Peter Mitchell, Mario Giacomelli, David Burnett, Michael Williamson, Bernard Cahier, Harry Gruyaert, Bruno Barbey, Paul Strand, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Lothar Rübelt, Henry Cartier-Bresson and Izis Bidermanas. I especially love street photography and urban architectural photography.

written by sirio174 on 2014-11-08 #lifestyle #hands #creativity #italy #como #david-goldblatt #regular-contributor #a-salute-to-the-masters