To what extent has David Goldblatt artistically influenced Michelle Sank.

Michelle Sank and David Goldblatt are two artists that have been linked by an exhibition – Quintessence. This exhibition is a group exhibition celebrating the first five years of Archisle. The Archisle Programme, hosted by the Société Jersiaise Photo Archive promotes contemporary photography through an ongoing programme of exhibitions, education and commissions. Archisle connects photographic archives, contemporary practice and experiences of island cultures and geographies through the development of a forum for creative discourse between Jersey and international artists. Quintessence selects works commissioned for the new Archisle Contemporary Collection at the Société Jersiaise Photographic Archive since 2011 to celebrate, critique, contrast and discuss what has been achieved over the first five years of the project. The exhibition features works by – Martin Parr, Tony Ray-Jones, Jem Southam,  Michelle Sank, David Goldblatt, Yury Toroptsov, Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths, Tom Pope, Peter Finnemore, Mark le Ruez, John Gibbons, Martin Toft, Finn Larsen. All of these artists are or have been nominated by another to take part in the exhibition. The artists were asked to nominate another artist who they feel have been artistically  influential to them in their lives artistically. Michelle Sank therefore nominated David Goldblatt. These two are publicly linked due to the Quintessence exhibition as both photograph cultural diversity aswell as  peoples physical and social landscape.

Michelle Sank

Michelle was born in Cape Town, South Africa. She left there in 1978 and has been living in England since 1987. Her images reflect a preoccupation with the human condition and to this end can be viewed as social documentary. Her work focusses on issues around social and cultural diversity. The two images Iam focussing on were both shown in the exhibition, and are aesthetically linked. Sanks image was taken at Harve des pas, Jersey. And is apart of a larger project called Insula, conducted/researched in Jersey as some images are from the archive.However, in the Quintessence exhibition Michelle chose to exhibit two images, although only one showed an obvious link to Goldblatts work the other could be linked aswell. This is due to the theme the two artists are focusing on which is photographing people in their natural landscapes. The less obvious image shows a theme of this as the image is of a greenhouse and one bright red flower in the midst of the overgrown chaos.

David Goldblatt

David Goldblatt is a South African photographer, born in South Africa after his Jewish parents fled Europe in the 1890’s . Since the late 1940’s he has photographed the social and physical landscape of South Africa. Goldblatt is well know for photographing people in South Africa during the period of apartheid, this is when black people were totally segregated and treated differently to white people through facilities such as schools, accommodation and transportation. Goldblatt received knowledge and success from this as during this period, a white person photographing black people was an unusual occurrence, this is because if you were caught interacting with a black person you would be sentenced to prison. Goldblatts images within the exhibition were some of my favourite, due to the stories behind them and also the visual presentation of the images was very appealing to me.Goldblatt was nominated by Sank for a degree of influence. This is obvious in the exhibition as one of the two images Sank exhibited is blatantly similar to one of the four photographs Goldblatt selected. This particular image was a photograph called -‘ She told him: “You’ll be the driver and i’ll be the lady”. This image was taken in Johannesburg, South Africa during the period of segregation, and sticking to the theme of social, cultural and physical landscape the image is of two people holding up a bumper of a car, and looked to be in the working class. This image particularly stood out as it is very similar to Sanks image of ‘Chloe and Leah’.

To conclue, David Goldblatt has influenced Michelle Sank artistically due to a theme of photographing peoples physical, social and cultural landscapes. The links between these two and influential traits that I have researched are visual and thematic links such as similar layouts to their images. Other considerable links between the two are that they were both born in South Africa, this could also have been a leading cause to the influence Goldblatt had on Sank. The photographs they both exhibited were picked due to the themes of social and cultural environments.