Well known for his photography which explored both public and private life in South Africa, Goldblatt created a body of powerful images which depicted life during the time of Apartheid. Goldblatt also extensively photographed colonial era monuments and buildings with the idea that the architecture reveals something about the people who built them.
In 1989, Goldblatt founded the Market Photography Workshop in Johannesburg to provide further education in visual literacy to disadvantaged students during the apartheid regime. In 1998 he was the first South African to have a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and in 2016, he was awarded the Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres by the Ministry of Culture of France.
