Journey Man

Magnum’s Ian Berry talks photojournalism, travel assignments and Olympus kit.

- Ian Berry

Ian Berry is a genuine living legend. Not only has he documented some of modern history’s big events, he’s even played a role in history himself, as the only photographer to document the police massacre of protestors at South Africa’s Sharpeville township in 1960.

Lancashire-born Ian was working as a press photographer in the country. There had been other photographers on the scene, but police had ordered them all to leave. Ian, though, ignored their demands. “I thought: ‘I’ll keep a discrete distance and see what happens’,” he recalls.

Even when the massacre began, he didn’t panic. “I assumed the police were shooting over people’s heads or shooting blanks,” he explains. “So I started photographing. People were running towards me; then a woman right next to me fell over, and I realised they weren’t kidding.”

The shocking photos were used were used in court to prove that police had lied about the incident. They also appeared in magazines such as Life, Paris Match and Stern, boosting the growing anti-apartheid movement around the world.