On the Mines is a re-designed and expanded version of David Goldblatt’s influential book of 1973. Goldblatt grew up in the South African town of Randfontein, which was shaped by the social culture and financial success of the gold mines surrounding it. When these mines started to fail in the mid-sixties Goldblatt began taking photos of them, which form the basis of On the Mines. The book features an essay on the human and political dimensions of mining in South Africa by Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer, whose writing has long influenced Goldblatt. The new version of the book maintains the original three chapters “The Witwatersrand: a Time and Tailings”, “Shaftsinking” and “Mining Men”, but is otherwise completely updated, in Goldblatt’s words, “to expand the view but not to alter the sense of things”. There are thirty-one new mostly unpublished photos including colour images, eleven deleted images, a postscript by Gordimer to her essay, as well as a text by Goldblatt reflecting on his childhood and the 1973 book. On the Mines is the first of many titles in an ambitious collaboration between the photographer and Steidl that will publish Goldblatt’s life work in a series of re-prints and new books. In Boksburg was published in 1982 as one of the earlier photobooks made in South Africa. David Goldblatt, himself from a white background and a critical observer of the dynamics inherent in the racist set-up of his native country, had become interested in capturing the “wholly uneventful flow of commonplace, orderly life” of the white population around him. Boksburg, a legally white-only town on the eastern periphery of Johannesburg which was heavily dependent on black labor, seemed to fit best his purposes, and between 1979 and 1980 he recorded everyday scenes in the streets, shops, clubs, churches, the municipality , homes, gardens and cemetery, choosing a fly-on-the-wall approach. Despite its nuanced complexity, the essay was rejected by Optima magazine which had commissioned it. Several photographs have been added to this Steidl edition, and it contains a new essay by Sean O’Toole, providing keen insight into the history of the book and the story behind the photographs and their subjects.