David Goldblatt: Fietas Fractured

This book presents photos by David Goldblatt (born 1930) of Fietas in Johannesburg, taken between 1952 and 2016, with an emphasis on his 1976-77 images of the suburb's last Indian residents before they were forcibly removed under apartheid.

Known affectionately by its inhabitants as Fietas, though officially called Pageview, this was one of the city's few "nonracial" suburbs, where Malay, African, Chinese, Indian and a few white people lived. Composed of narrow streets and small houses, here different races and religions formed a strong, safe community where children played in the streets. There were two mosques, Hindu, Tamil and Muslim schools, cricket, soccer and bridge clubs, and shops. In 1948 the National Party came to power and made the clearance of all "nonwhite" inhabitants of Pageview an immediate objective: some 5,000 Africans and other people of color were evicted or "persuaded" to leave.