Author(s): David Goldblatt

Photography

This text reflects aspects of an era of South African history and culture in photographic and written form. The book grew out of David Goldblatt's desire to explore South Africa's structural heritage, "to put on film what seemed so immediately and potently eloquent of the civilisation we had built". The 145 black and white photographs are a range of structures in South Africa which gave expression to, or are evidence of, some of the forces that shaped South African society in the period 1652 to 1990, which Goldblatt has called the Era of Baasskap. The introductory text and extended caption for each photograph provides the reader with selected insights to the context of each photograph, giving a glimpse of the matrix of cultural, social, political, economic and religious interaction from which each subject photographed emerged and in which it had its "being".