Among them, four friends teamed-up to move through the townships as it became potentially fatal to work there alone. Working on the dawn patrol, they captured numerous pictures of people rioting, fighting, or being killed. The four became so infamous for capturing violence that a local magazine dubbed them the Bang-Bang Club.

Kevin Carter

Kevin Carter was born in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1960 from Catholic parents. After graduating from high school in Pretoria in 1976, he studied pharmacy before dropping out a year later. He was drafted into the army in which he served four years. In 1980, Carter defended a black waiter being insulted resulting in him being badly beaten by fellow servicemen. This encouraged him to take a temporary absence from the army and start a career as a disk jockey in Durban. Upon returning to the army, Carter was injured by a bomb in 1983 while on guard duty at the headquarters. Soon after, he drifted into journalism, first working as sports photographer for the Sunday Express, and then exposing the brutality of apartheid for The Star. In 1993, while on a trip to Sudan with Joao Silva, Carter photographed a starving toddler who collapsed on her way to a feeding center with a vulture waiting nearby. Sold to The New York Times, the photograph was immediately reprinted in many other newspapers around the world. In April 1994, Carter won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography. He died 3 month later, after committing suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning.

Ken Oosterbroek

Ken Oosterbroek was born in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1962. He initially struggled to start a career in photography, presenting photos taken illegally in Angola to various newspapers. He was eventually hired by The Star, a daily newspapers based in Johannesburg. He worked for the paper several years, covering the struggle against apartheid in the townships with his best friend Kevin Carter, before being appointed its chief photographer in 1991. He hired Joao Silva shortly afterwards. Oosterbroek won numerous photography awards for his work. He was named Ilford Press Photographer of the Year – a South African Press award in 1989 and 1991, and won a second prize in General News category of the World Press Photo Awards in 1992. In April 1994, a few days before the country’s first democratic elections, Oosterbroek and Greg Marinovich went in Thokoza, a township located south of Johannesburg, to cover a firefight between the National Peacekeeping Force (NPKF) and African National Congress (ANC) supporters. He was shot and killed by a friendly fire while Marinovich was seriously injured.

Greg Marinovich

Greg Marinovich was born in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1962. In 1985, he moved to Botswana where he developed an interest in people living under political turmoil. Upon returning to South Africa, he worked as a guide for a safari company where he self-taught photography. Soon after, he started working for some local newspapers as a photographer. With increasing violent upheavals in the townships, he felt the need to cover those events despite a low experience in that type of coverage. In 1990, Marinovich went to Soweto where a violent fight between ANC and Inkhatha Freedom Party (IFP) supporters had just ended. He took several pictures of a brutal murder of an IFP supporter and supplied them to the Sunday Times and the Associated Press. One of these pictures earned him several awards a year later, including the Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography. Marinovich then started to work regularly for international newspapers such as Newsweek, Time, and The New York Times, as well as local newspapers and magazines. His recent investigations into the Marikana massacre of miners by police have been called the most important South African journalism post-Apartheid.

Joao Silva

Joao Silva was born in Lisbon, Portugal in 1966 before his family settled in South Africa. In 1989, he started a career as a photographer for a local newspaper. While on assignment, he managed to convince the editors to let him cover the violence in Thokoza. With the importance of the event, he both submitted his photographs to the local paper and Reuters. In 1991, Silva resigned from the paper to work for The Star as a staff photographer before joining the Associated Press three years later. In 1996, he started to freelance full time and regularly supplied pictures to Reuters and The New York Times. In 1992, Silva was awarded South Africa Press Photographer of the Year. His images have also won various international awards including the World Press Photo and have been displayed in several exhibitions. In 2000, Silva co-authored with Greg Marinovich The Bang-Bang Club, a factual story of press photographers who covered the end of the apartheid era in South Africa. In 2010, Silva lost both his legs after stepping on a landmine while on patrol with US soldiers near Kandahar, Afghanistan. He is currently based in South Africa and recently photographed the riots in Zamdela and the anniversary of the Marikana miners’ strike massacre.