NYTimes Obituary Peter Magubane Fought Apartheid With His Camera

[David Lockmiller]

NYTimes Obituary Peter Magubane
Jan. 1, 2024

Peter Magubane documented the cruelties of white South African rule, and he was made to pay for it, enduring beatings and 586 consecutive days in solitary confinement.

Peter Magubane, a Black South African photographer whose images documenting the cruelties and violence of apartheid drew global acclaim but punishment at home, including beatings, imprisonment and 586 consecutive days of solitary confinement, died on Monday. He was 91.

“I did not want to leave the country to find another life,” he told The Guardian in 2015. “I was going to stay and fight with my camera as my gun. I did not want to kill anyone, though. I wanted to kill apartheid.”

He never staged pictures, or asked for permission to photograph people, he said. “I apologize afterwards if someone feels insulted,” he said, “but I want the picture.”

Perhaps his most famous photograph, Peter Magubane’s 1956 image shows an anonymous Black maid in a beret and apron tending a young white girl on a bench marked with the words “Europeans Only.”

It is one of the finest "story" photographs that I have ever seen:

A young white girl is sitting on a park bench and just to her right in the photograph, on the bench back support plank, is a stenciled sign reading "EUROPEANS ONLY."
The middle-aged black maid must sit behind her young charge in order to work with the girl's hair on the back of her head.

The Apartheid law is clear and is to be obeyed, with untold consequences for violation of the law.

There were a number of other very excellent Apartheid photographs in the obituary that are well worth viewing.