The Story of 'The Bang Bang Club'

Jan. 4 -- A picture tells a thousand words. But in some cases, even that’s not enough. A picture tells a thousand words. But in some cases, even that’s not enough. A picture tells a thousand words. But in some cases, even that’s not enough. A picture tells a thousand words. But in some cases, even that’s not enough. A picture tells a thousand words. But in some cases, even that’s not enough.

Greg Marinovich and Joao Silva are two photojournalists who were widely acclaimed for their pictures of South Africa’s transition from apartheid in the early 1990s.

Along with two of their colleagues, Kevin Carter and Ken Oosterbrook, they became sowell known for getting the best pictures of the violent revolution in their country that newspapers gave the group a nickname: The Bang Bang Club.

The group’s members won just about all the prizes that could be won: local prizes, national prizes — even two Pulitzers, the highest accolade in the profession.

Yet, 10 years after they covered this milestone era in their country’s history, Marinovich and Silva thought they still hadn’t told the whole story.

So they wrote a book, also named The Bang Bang Club.

Why They Wrote

Marinovich is a tall man, with a closely-shaved head and a menacing brow, and the self-described build of an aging soccer player. He provides the bulk of the narrative for their book.

“We wanted to tell the story of people who we knew that lived in these conflict areas and what their lives were all about — what it really meant, and they’re the people that this story is obviously about,” he said.

“We also wanted to use the story about ourselves and the story of our friends as part of narrative” — a narrative that includes the deaths of Oosterbrook and Carter.

His colleague, Silva, is short but powerfully built and although engagingly jocular, the co-author of the Bang Bang Club is reticent about telling his life story.