Product Description

The Bang-Bang Club was a group of four young photographers, friends and colleagues, Ken Oosterbroek, Kevin Carter, Greg Marinovich and Joao Silva, who covered the last years of apartheid, taking many of the photographs that encapsulate the final years of white South Africa. Two of them won Pulitzer Prizes for individual photos. Ken, the oldest and a mentor to the others, died, accidentally shot while working; Kevin, the most troubled of the four, committed suicide weeks after winning his Pulitzer for a photograph of a starving baby in the Sudanese famine. Written by Greg and Joao, "The Bang-Bang Club" tells their stories, the story of four remarkable young men, the stresses, tensions and moral dilemmas of working in situations of extreme violence, pain and suffering, the relationships between the four and the story of the end of apartheid. This is an immensely powerful, riveting and harrowing book.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #28916 in Books
• Published on: 2001-09-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Ask any foreign editor on a national paper what part of the job gives them the most grief, and you'll almost certainly be told, "the foreign correspondents". Almost without exception, the reporters who bring back the best stories from war zones are neurotic, dysfunctional, paranoid and almost impossible to deal with. And if The Bang-Bang Club is anything to go by, you can include war photographers in the same category. The Bang-Bang Club was the name given to four South African photo-journalists, Greg Marinovich, Joao Silva, Ken Oosterbroek and Kevin Carter, who made a name for themselves going into the townships to capture first-hand the violence that erupted in South Africa between ANC supporters and the predominantly Zulu Inkhata party after the release of Nelson Mandela and prior to the first democratic elections. As a guide to the different factions and as a record of brutality, the book cannot be faulted. The British media predictably only ever reported the more sensational atrocities, and The Bang-Bang Club is a potent reminder of the ever-present violence and hatred that have dominated South African life since the early 1990s. Where the authors are on shakier ground is in the analysis of their own condition. Marinovich writes of the "addiction to adrenaline" in his pursuit of the story, and we do get to hear the downside of the booze, drugs and failed relationships that were a by-product of this addiction. But though Marinovich admits to questioning his motivation in getting up close and personal to the violence, he rather lets himself and the others off the hook with the notion that everything is justified by the importance of the story. This is as maybe, but another interesting line of enquiry might have been to ask whether the photographers' sublimated their own violent urges through their work. In other words, they let the death squads act out their feelings, while still retaining a moral high ground. The Bang-Bang Club exacted a high price of membership; Oosterbroek was killed by a stray bullet, Carter committed suicide and Marinovich was badly wounded and it's certainly not a club I would have been keen to join myself. But whatever you might think of the authors' psychiatric condition, you have to give them credit for exposing the stories that other journalists refused to touch. As The Bang-Bang Club might have said, "It's a dirty job, but someone's got to do it." --John Crace

Fergal Keane
‘This is a book of extraordinary power. I cannot recommend it highly enough’

Independent on Sunday
'a compelling account of what it is like to be a war correspondent in one’s own country... [a] superbly told story'

Customer Reviews

A vexing story of South Africa's transition to majority rule
The Bang Bang Club is the story of four young South African photographers who developed an uncanny skill and reputation for coverage of the bloody events that marked the country's transition from apartheid to majority rule. It is an exciting, gripping, 'heart in the mouth' read.

The book has two tracks; the development of the four men from varied and, in some cases, dysfunctional backgrounds, to prominence in their chosen profession. Along the way, they were drawn to each other because of their skills, their drive and ambition. Sometimes they worked together, but always their was a sense of competition, as evidenced by the frustration Jaoa Silva experienced at missing the shot that won Kevin Carter a Pullitzer prize - a vulture sitting in the Namibian bush, watching and waiting for a very young boy to die. Together they tried to come to terms with the enormity of the events that they were covering and also their role as chroniclers. Carter's drug problem and suicide came about because of an inability to deal with the emotional stresses.

On another level, the Bang Bang Club provides an explanation of how the country came to be at war with itself between 1990 and 1994, and the role of the incumbent white regime (trying to spread dissension); the ANC (negotiating with the government) and the Inkatha movement, representing the Zulu tribe and the country's transient hostel labour force. Marinovich's antipathy to the system of white rule is clearly expressed, but it does not get in the way of an objective narration or recording of events.

The book is also quite disturbing, leaving the reader to deal with a number of uncomfortable thoughts.

Many war photographers including those such as the celebrated Don McCullin, have struggled with the professional task of recording events and the consequent dissociation from the reality occurring in front of them. It seems that Marinovich sometimes could not believe that he had observed ANC supporters attack and then burn a suspected Inkatha member, Lindsay Tshabalala. A picture that won him the Pullitzer Prize. What must have been going through his mind?

The four members of the club courted danger. Sometimes they were in battle zones with bullets flying, and this is how Ken Oosterbroek lost his life; at other times they were witnessing the most horrific aspects of mob rule. It would not have taken much for the fury of the mob to have shifted to these white interlopers. What sort of courage and personality is it that pushes these guys to places where most 'sensible' people would not dare to tread?

And then there is the sheer scale of the violence being witnessed. It is something of a cliché that 'life is cheap' in Africa, but this does not explain the propensity for violence documented here- the slashing of a man's tendons behind his knee so that he could not run away from his would-be executioners. What sort of grief must have possessed Brian Mkhize when he met with Marinovich in a ditch the night after eleven of his relatives had been massacred? Perhaps it is no different from what we have been learning of the violence in the Balkans, in Ireland or any other war zone, but still it is shocking to see how men can so easily be consumed by hatred and violence.

The book helps to think through some, but not all, of these questions. For example, it seems that the photographer's sense of powerlessness to stop or change what is going on around him, is one of the emotions which is most difficult to deal with. The book is a powerful narration of these personal and political events, and no worse for leaving the reader with these questions and concerns.

The Bang-Bang Club about people not war
I found 'The Bang-Bang Club' a very powerful and moving book. It gives a personal and honest view of a difficult period in all the authors’ life with the backdrop of a chaotic and disturbing period in world history. The book is jointly written by two photographers but follows the life’s of four photographers mainly constricting on there joint time in South Africa. I started the book thinking that they were heroes, the pictures that they took were horrifying and they rest they life’s to let the world see what was happening. The book adds depth to this view, it turns the heroes into real people with there own problems. It show how they coupled with death on a daily basis, they thought they were invincible. This changes when a stray bullet shoots one of the group. They then have to try and deal with there own problems, in there own way, some manage some do not. The fact that the amazing photos were not taken by ‘heroes’ but real people makes their photos more powerful not less. I found the book fascinating not only for adding an other view to the conflict in South Africa but also giving me insight into what these amazing people go though. A must read for anyone who wants to try and under people better (that I hope is everyone!)

Reveals what you never knew about the end of the apartheid
This is a truly great book, revealing, heart rending, occasionally horrifying but genuinely written. This tells the tale of a small group of photographers who made their names photographing the street battles that broke out in the townships of Johannesburg. It also gives insights into the complex politics that grasped South Arica during the time after Mandela's release. I couldn't put it down.