David GoldblattDutch Reformed Church inaugurated on 31 July 1966, Op-die-Berg, Koue Bokkeveld. 23 May 1987 , 1987
David Goldblatt’s ‘Structures of Dominion and Democracy’ is a long-term photographic project that examines how South Africa’s built environment reflects the ideologies of its successive political regimes. Initiated in the 1980s and developed over several decades, the series documents a wide range of structures – courthouses, mining compounds, schools, homes, churches, and public spaces – each chosen for its connection to systems of power, control, and belief. Goldblatt was interested in how architecture could serve as a material record of social values. By photographing these structures with clarity and restraint, he invited viewers to consider the moral and historical forces embedded within them.
The series is divided into two parts: structures of "dominion," associated with the apartheid regime and its mechanisms of racial control, and those of "democracy," built after 1994, in the wake of South Africa’s transition to constitutional rule. Goldblatt did not present this shift as a clean rupture, but as a complex, ongoing negotiation between past and present. Many of the post-apartheid structures appear provisional, hopeful yet unresolved, while others suggest the persistence of older patterns of inequality. Together, the photographs offer a sober reflection on the relationship between architecture and ideology, and on how the aspirations and contradictions of a society are made visible in its physical forms.
