 Ian Berry was the only photographer at the Sharpeville massacre in March 1960. In the first of a new video series on BBC Culture, Through the Lens, he relives the event that marked a defining moment for the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa.
“You wait for things to come together, and it all has to happen in a hundredth of a second,” says the Magnum photographer Ian Berry. “Because very frequently you don’t have another chance.” Berry captured a pivotal moment in South African history: the Sharpeville massacre on 21 March 1960. Sixty-nine men, women and children died, and at least 180 were injured when police fired at a crowd of protestors in the township near Vereeniging. “I walked back to the car, and the cops opened fire,” says the British photographer in this video, the first in the new series Through the Lens, which marks the 70th anniversary of Magnum Photos. “I saw these kids running towards me, and initially I thought they were just shooting blanks… Only as they started to fall around me did I realize they were shooting real bullets into the back of people.” Two years later, Berry was invited to join Magnum Photos. Over the next three months, Through the Lens will be featuring other defining events in history witnessed by Magnum photographers, including Bruce Davidson’s photos of the 1965 Selma to Montgomery march and images of the 1978-9 Iranian Revolution by Abbas. The massacre at Sharpeville prompted international condemnation – the event is now marked as a national holiday, Human Rights Day. Berry went on to photograph South Africa over the next four decades, revealing what it was like to live with apartheid. In the video, he talks about his images, and how one, in particular, marked the moment he knew the regime couldn’t last. “I realized then that things were changing fast, and it was more or less the end of apartheid.” Continue reading. Comments are closed.
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"I just graduated from the BFA in Graphic Design at the Federal University of Pernambuco, in Brazil, and one of the chapters of my monograph was about composition. As a motion designer, the proper layout of elements is a very important phase in my creative process, so any tool that helps with making decisions on that is very valuable. What I love about your studies is that it's full of images and resources, it's a gold mine in my opinion. Thanks for providing so much information at an affordable price." - Eveline Falcão
"The Art of Composition: A Dynamic Symmetry User's Guide for the Modern Artist deserves to be a physical book in Barnes & Noble & on my coffee table!" - Elliot McGucken
"The Art of Composition: A Dynamic Symmetry User's Guide for the Modern Artist is, without a doubt, one of the most comprehensive e-books ever written on the topic of design in art. Whether you're a beginner, intermediate, or advanced art/photography student, this user's guide is indispensable. I recommend it to all of my artists and photographers and have it linked to my website The Artist Angle." - Jennifer Finley "Though I am not a newcomer to photography, I am far from being a professional. So too, it has only been in the past few months that I discovered dynamicsymmetryart.com. I was transformed from being concerned with camera equipment, f-stops, shutter speed, ISO to considering how I would apply the principles of classical art training to my photography.
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