Politics

Living Apart: South Africa Under Apartheid

From the Sharpeville Massacre to the 1994 election, Ian Berry's images provide a rare insight into South Africa's past

Ian Berry

Ian Berry | Living Apart Shebeen scenes. Soweto, South Africa. 1961. © Ian Berry | Magnum Photos
Ian Berry | Living Apart: South Africa Under Apartheid A young black girl, scarcely more than a child herself, looks after a baby girl for a white family. South Africa. 1969. © Ian Berry | Magnum Photos
Ian Berry | Living Apart Le Cap, South Africa. 1984. © Ian Berry | Magnum Photos
Ian Berry | Living Apart Supporters climb to every vantage point and await the arrival of Nelson Mandela. Natal, Lamontville, South Africa. 1994 © Ian Berry | Magnum Photos
Ian Berry | Living Apart Affection between two people in a multi-racial cafe. Johannesburg, South Africa. 1961. © Ian Berry | Magnum Photos
Ian Berry | Living Apart White child with black nanny at a National Party meeting. Harrismith, Orange Free State, South Africa. 1994. © Ian Berry | Magnum Photos
Ian Berry | Living Apart Nelson Mandela, then acting as a defence lawyer, outside the Drill Hall, during the Treason Trial. Johannesburg, South Africa. 1961. © Ian Berry | Magnum Photos
Ian Berry | Living Apart The coon carnival, a traditional New Year celebration in the coloured District Six area. Cape Town, South Africa. 1960. © Ian Berry | Magnum Photos
Ian Berry | Living Apart A tribal fight champion (standing) postures before an illegal gold mine fighter he went on to lose to. Gauteng, South Africa. 1961. © Ian Berry | Magnum Photos
Ian Berry | Living Apart Archbishop Desmond Tutu conducts a funeral service in a makeshift tent for a schoolgirl shot by the police. Gauteng, South Africa. 1985. © Ian Berry | Magnum Photos
Ian Berry | Living Apart Since the abolition of Pass Laws thousands of hawkers flood Johannesburg's pavements, many camping out overnight. Here, huddling against the cold winter dawn. Johannesburg, South Africa. 1991. © Ian Berry | Magnum Photos
Ian Berry | Living Apart Afrikaner women members of Kappiekommando stage silent protest at the Voortrekker Monument. Pretoria, South Africa. 1984. © Ian Berry | Magnum Photos
Ian Berry | Living Apart Coffin bearers give the ANC clenched fist salute at the funeral of a schoolgirl shot by the police. Gauteng, South Africa. 1985. © Ian Berry | Magnum Photos
Ian Berry | Living Apart Annual meeting of members of the Zion Christian Church, the biggest religious group in South Africa. Just prior to the elections leaders of the main parties, including whites, attended, attempting (...)
Ian Berry | Living Apart Man in Alexandra Township squatter camp remains cheerful despite torrential rain. Gauteng, South Africa. 1995. © Ian Berry | Magnum Photos
Ian Berry | Living Apart Villagers flee the centre of the village where the police have opened fire on them, trying to protect themselves from the bullets by putting their coats over their head. Sharpeville, South Africa. (...)

In the post-war period, the South African government gradually developed a policy that was meant to permanently retain the rights and privileges of a white minority: apartheid, racial prejudices and tensions create difficulties in many societies, but only in South Africa was segregation institutionalized and regulated. The results were tragic and disturbing.

The camera of Ian Berry has uniquely recorded this aspect of the South African experience: the duty to ‘live apart’ while occupying the same space. He first set out for South Africa as a boy of seventeen and thus began a career of recording ordinary lives in extraordinary circumstances. Present at the Sharpeville shootings in 1960, Berry has returned to South Africa many times in the course of the succeeding decades and captured many of its most significant moments, including the 1994 election and its remarkable aftermath. As his photographs show, the wounds of over forty years of apartheid cannot be quickly or easily forgotten.

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