David Goldblatt is a photographer with a deep and abiding sense of and feel for detail. This is apparent from the first tentative steps taken into the gallery by the visitor and the immediate impression is of a man who thinks and plans before snapping away and, in fact that same thought remains with the visitor for a long time after they have left the gallery.

 

Attention to detail is such an overused and abused phrase, thrown in countless times where it didn’t fit into a description and yet it goes here without saying.

 

A quote from him in a recent edition of Empire magazine struck me as epitomising the man and his yearning for people to look at his work for its own sake and not in the context of who the photographer is or the man behind the lens.

 

 “I don’t see my work as having any influence on anybody. I don’t think anybody has ever done anything, on account of a photograph of mine. I really mean that.”

 

The distinct feeling that this writer brings back from the gallery is of pictures that really do stand alone and demand attention if the viewer is to grasp that depth and subtlety behind the choices of location, camera angle and subject.

 

An hour spent was in fact too short a time and the exhibition will see this writer returning to peruse at length and marvel at the simplicity of what real pictures actually entail. Considered usage of the camera. 

 

If a picture tells a thousand words than the viewer or listener has to pay deep attention because these pictures reward a bit of patience.