South African photojournalist Peter Magubane, who was one of the great chroniclers of the racist violence of the apartheid system in South Africa, died on Monday at the age of 91, his family announced.
"He passed away today in peace, surrounded by his family," announced SANEF, the representative body of the South African press.
This black photographer had worked in the early 1990s as the official portraitist of Nelson Mandela, after the release in 1994 of the iconic figure of the struggle against apartheid and who in <> became the country's first black president.
"South Africa has lost a freedom fighter, a chronicler and photographer like no other," Culture Minister Zizi Kodwa said on the social network X. "He fearlessly documented the injustices of apartheid," he added.
One ofMagubane's best-known photographs was one he took in 1956 that showed a white girl sitting on a bench with a sign reading "reserved for Europeans" and her black nanny sitting on the bench next door.
The prestigious photojournalist had been imprisoned for periods of several years for photographing demonstrations in front of a prison or for disobeying a court order prohibiting him from continuing to practice his profession.
Magubane published about fifteen books, most of which were censored during the apartheid period, which lasted from 1948 to the early 1990s.
- photography