Nechama Brodie The Bang-Bang Club by Greg Marinovich and Joao Silva (William Heinemann) Contemporary visual theorists have spent decades educating people about “ways of seeing”. Images have become texts, subject to interpretation, evaluation, criticism and judgement. We are expected not just to see, but to actually develop a conscious relationship with the visual media that confront us every day. While the academic benefits of such pursuits are self-evident, the role of those responsible for recording these images has ultimately become marginalised – simply another element of the text which must be subjected to critical evaluation. Thankfully, The Bang-Bang Club is the antithesis of such theory: a refusal to succumb to futile attempts to justify and interpret images in terms of frames and subject matters, preferring to be personal, emotional – even self-critical, without referring to strictly artistic qualities save for when they drive the narrative. Even disregarding the raw power of the pages of award-winning photographs, it’s also a surprisingly good read – no mean feat for a couple of serious photographers; photographers are not generally given to long conversations with those of us outside of their click-clique. The book documents the experiences of four South African press photographers who worked largely in the trouble-torn townships of the early Nineties: Greg Marinovich, Joao Silva, Kevin Carter and Ken Oosterbroek. Told through the eyes of Marinovich, the story offers some very human, and appealing, insights. While it’s a little flawed by personal bias, The Bang-Bang Club manages to avoid most of the self-indulgent pitfalls of many autobiographical works. None of its four subjects are fully spared the critical eye of hindsight, whether in discussion of personal relationships or decisions made on the job. But the book has relevance beyond the personal encounters it documents. Like the photographs it includes, Marinovich’s account serves as a record of one of South Africa’s darkest times; a period marked by extreme violence, suspicion – and, ultimately, hope. The book recalls events with frightening detail, from the Boipatong massacre to the thousand-strong impis that terrorised the streets of Tokoza. Events that many South Africans have forgotten, despite the best efforts of the truth commission. The sheer graphic content of The Bang-Bang Club forces its readers to acknowledge exactly how far South Africa has progressed in the last decade. The role and reception of “the photographer” is also explored, but never fully explained. In his introduction, Marinovich comments: “We discovered that one of the strongest links among us was questions about the morality of what we do: when do you press the shutter release and when do you cease being a photographer? We discovered that the camera was never a filter through which we were protected from the worst of what we witnessed and photographed. Quite the opposite – it seems like the images have been burned on to our minds as well as our films.” Instead of attempting to answer these questions, the book illustrates by example, the most notable being Kevin Carter’s Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of a skeletal young girl in Sudan, seemingly being stalked by a vulture. The incessant questions Carter faced following the photo’s reproduction, about the whether or not he had helped the girl in the frame, undoubtedly contributed to his later suicide.
While Marinovich and Silva largely refrain from being directly critical of the media’s response to the photograph, the allusions are clear: somehow it was acceptable for the rest of the world to embrace the image; guilt and shame lay solely at the feet of the photographer. Carter’s life is evidence that, in today’s increasingly visual world, the war photographer has become both the hero and the pariah.