JOHANNESBURG: South African photographer David Goldblatt, whose work documented the abuses and divisions of apartheid, died in his sleep on Monday, a leading gallery announced. He was 87. “He passed away peacefully in his sleep at 5:37 am (0337 GMT) in his home in Johannesburg,” Liza Essers, the director of the Goodman Gallery, told AFP.

He will be buried Tuesday in Johannesburg. For millions of people outside South Africa, Goldblatt work’s lifted the veil on the nightmare of apartheid, under which the white-minority government’s enshrined racial divisions under law from 1948.

In 1988, he was the first South African to be given a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. A year later he founded the Market Photography Workshop in Johannesburg in 1989, which has since become a hub for developing young talent in the city.

In post-apartheid South Africa, he remained a revered figure and even turned down a national honour in protest against a proposed state secrets bill in 2011.—AFP