TOBY SHAPSHAK: 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 t...
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