South African photographer Peter Magubane documented the fight against apartheid in his country. His photos from the 1976 Soweto student uprising made him famous around the world. He died on Monday at the age of 91 (Archive).
Photo: KEYSTONE/AP/Denis Farrell
Black South African photojournalist Peter Magubane died on Monday at the age of 91, his family announced. For decades he has chronicled the violence of the racist apartheid regime, particularly the 1976 Soweto student uprising.
When anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela was released in 1990, Magubane became his official photographer until his election four years later as the country’s first black president.
“South Africa has lost an exceptional freedom fighter, storyteller and photographer,” Culture Minister Zizi Kodwa tweeted. “Peter Magubane fearlessly documented the injustices of apartheid.”
One of his most famous photos, dating from 1956, shows a little white girl on a bench marked “For Europeans Only”, with her black nanny sitting on the other side of the bench in a Johannesburg suburb. .
Having started as a driver for the trendy magazine Drum, dedicated to black urban culture, he moved to the photo lab before positioning himself behind the lens. He documented daily life and some key moments of the struggle against apartheid.
Arrested in 1969 while photographing protesters in front of the prison where activist Winnie Mandela was held, he spent 586 days in solitary confinement in prison and upon his release was sentenced to cease all photographic activity for five years. In 1971 he was arrested again and imprisoned for many months for disobeying this order.
Persecuted by the police, who fought as much as possible, he extensively covered the Soweto student uprising of 1976, for which he took some of the most evocative photos that made him known throughout the world.
Peter Magubane published about fifteen books, many of which were censored during apartheid, a segregationist regime that raged in South Africa from 1948 to the early 1990s.
/ATS
2024-01-01 19:17:00
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