vintage silver gelatin print on fibre-based paper

Artwork date: 1977
Signature details: signed on the reverse
Exhibited: Examples of the photograph were exhibited in:
Photo London Digital, Somerset House, London, Goodman Gallery, 7 October to 18 October 2020.
Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney, ‘David Goldblatt: Photographs 1948- 2018’, 19 October to 3 March 2019.
South African Jewish Museum, Cape Town, ‘Kith, Kin and Khaya: South African Photographs’, 31 October 2010 to 1 February 2011.
The Jewish Museum, New York, ‘South African Photographs’, 2 May to 19 September 2010.
Rencontres internationales de la Photographie, Arles, 'David Goldblatt', 2006.
Foto Museum, Winterhur, 'David Goldblatt', 3 March to 20 May.
Literature: Examples of the photograph are illustrated in:
Kent, R. (ed). (2019). ‘David Goldblatt: Photographs 1948- 2018’. Sydney: Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, illustrated on p.208.
Goldblatt, D. (2010). ‘Kith, Kin and Khaya: South African Photographs’. Johannesburg: David Krut Publishing, illustrated on p.175.
Goldblatt, D. (2006). ‘David Goldblatt: Photographs’. Roma: Contrasto, illustrated on p. 140.
Goldblatt, D. (1998). ‘South Africa: Structures of Things Then’. New York: Monacelli Press, illustrated on p.85.

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sheet size: 33.5 x 30.5 cm; image size: 17.5 x 17 cm; framed size: 34.5 x 31.5 x 4.5 cm

Provenance:

The collection of the late Paul Alberts.

ABOUT THE ARTWORK

Ozzie Docrat was born in his grandfather’s house on Delarey Street, in 1928, He grew up in his parents’ house, on 20^th Street, with four brothers and two sisters. It was in that house in 1950 that he prepared his room for his bride. He had the walls decorated with a wavy plaster finish and he had this bedroom suite made to order. In time he inherited the house from his mother. Then in 1977, having been ‘disqualified’ under the Group Areas Act from living in his house, he cut six inches from the width of each of these beds, so that they would fit into his new bedroom in the house he did not want in Lenasia, the group area some 40 kilometers to the south-west of the city to which most of Johannesburg’s Indians were consigned.

The Docrats’ house in Pageview was demolished in 1977. Unaccountably a ruined fragment survived the bulldozers: the new house was built for Whites by the Department of Community Development. Docrat told me, ‘I haven’t been back to Pageview, but I passed in a bus. More or less I kept my eyes closed and I cursed. I saw my lavatory and I thought, ‘Shit. That’s all they’ve left us is shit.’ It stands, monumentally, to this day.[1]

This image was taken in 1977 when David Goldblatt was photographing the community of Pageview ­– an area affectionately known as Fietas by its residents and which lay north-west of Johannesburg. His project to document the area covered an extensive period from 1952 to 2006, with some of his most important historical images of Fietas taken in 1976 and 1977, before the last Indian residents were forcibly removed under apartheid.

During this time Goldblatt documented the Docrat family, their home and place of business on a number of occasions, creating a poignant historical document of the last days of Fietas.

^{[1] Goldblatt, D. (1988). South Africa: The Structure of Things Then. Oxford University Press: Cape Town.}

LEFT: In Ozzi Docrat’s home before its destruction under the Group Areas Act, Fietas, January 1977

RIGHT: Ozzie Dicrat’s shop after its forced closure under the Group Area Act, April 1977

LEFT: Fazela Docrat in her father’s shop, Subway Grocers, before its destruction under the Group Areas Act. 1976

RIGHT: After the forced closure of subway grocers under the Group Areas Act, Asiya Docrat helps her father, Ozzie Docrat, remove his shop-fittings. Delarey Street 1977

David Goldblatt, The reinforced concrete structure that housed the water tank and lavatory of the Docrat family on 20th street. The front-end loaders were unable to topple it during the destruction of the house under the Group Areas Act and so it stands to this day. 9 April 2012.

COLLECTOR'S NOTE:

An example of the photograph forms part of the permanent collection of the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven.

COLLECTIONS:

The artist is represented in numerous local and international collections, notably, Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town; University of South Africa, Pretoria; Constitutional Court, Johannesburg; The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago; Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Photographers' Gallery, London and Museum of Modern Art, New York.