Peter Magubane documented black life and resistance in South Africa.
Peter Magubane/PMHA/Courtesy the Magubane family
Magubane’s photographs testify to the hope that is at the heart of the struggle for a just world.
Dolly Rathebe (centre) in detail of the album cover for Dolly Rathebe & Elite Swingsters.
Gallo Music Publishing
Her celebration of black life, black beauty and black humanity through her films and music was subversive.
A demonstration in Red Square (since renamed Freedom Square) in the Johannesburg suburb of Fordsburg, South Africa, 6th April 1952.
Photo by Jurgen Schadeberg/Getty Images
When the Truth and Reconciliation was mandated to investigate human rights violations from March 1960, that left twelve years of apartheid rule unexplored.
A younger Dennis Brutus, president of the South African Non-Racial Olympic Committee in Montreal, Canada in 1976.
Neil Leifer /Sports Illustrated via Getty Images
That none of his collections were published in apartheid South Africa testifies to the police state’s censorship.
Jürgen Schadeberg in 1955 with trainee photographers at Drum, Peter Magubane, left, and Bob Gosani. Both became well-known photographers.
© Jürgen Schadeberg
The gift of his images lies in their depiction of the social worlds that apartheid sought to destroy, but that live on through the photographs.