An eye into our national soul

Photographers such as Sam Nzima and David Goldblatt have been great chroniclers of our history

My favourite saying from the great photographer David Goldblatt was his response to why he didn’t shoot colour film during the dark days of racial repression: “During those years colour seemed too sweet a medium to express the anger, disgust and fear that apartheid inspired.”

Last Monday, news broke that this great documenter of SA’S dark legacy had died. He was 87.

In May Sam Nzima, the man who gave the world the image of a dying Hector Pieterson being carried during the 1976 student uprising, passed away at the age of 83.

They were part of a generation that depicted apartheid’s horrors in all their tragedy; and sometimes, through Goldblatt’s lens, tragi-comedy.

It was the golden age of photojournalism, and especially remarkable because photography was so difficult.

Taking a good picture required years of practice, expensive equipment, an ability to gauge the quality of light, set the exposure and the film speed, and know how to frame a picture. Press photographers often had to do this under extreme pressure, as Mzima did that fateful day in 1976.

The Bang Bang Club of Kevin Carter, Greg Marinovich, Ken Oosterbroek and João Silva would become the most famous photography “cowboys” of the chaotic early 1990s.

Marinovich and Carter won

Pulitzer prizes, Silva continued taking pictures after he stood on a landmine in Afghanistan in 2010 (and still works for The New York Times). Oosterbroek was tragically killed by badly trained security forces in 1994.

The Bang Bang Club members were inspirational for young journalists. I was lucky enough to work with Marinovich at the Mail & Guardian. He always had time for youngsters, sharing tips, telling stories, being a mentor.

I was also lucky enough to know Goldblatt.

When I was a teenager I discovered journalism and photography through a man who would be my mentor for decades, the great photojournalist John Brett Cohen. Being a photographer seemed a noble pursuit in those dark years of the 1980s. Given how complex film photography was, I was told as a young reporter to choose. Because writing was what I had always done, I chose that.

Imagine telling a young reporter today they would have the luxury of doing only one form of what would be called “content capturing” now. They are expected to take notes, pictures, tweet, post images and video to Twitter, Instagram and Facebook Live and then write a story.

But time has changed the technology. Until about 15 years ago, when digital photography really took off, and the preceding 10 years when compact cameras became mainstream, it wasn’t easy to take a good picture. Now we all have smartphones and capture everything with relative ease.

It makes the images taken by Goldblatt, Mzima and the Bang Bang Club members all the more moving.

Being a photographer seemed a noble pursuit in those dark years of the 1980s