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Ian Berry’s Sharpeville images exposed apartheid violence to the world
visibility comment0 event September 25, 2026 timer 05:37
Ian Berry’s photographs of the Sharpeville massacre provided evidence of a crime against humanity.
The influential veteran photojournalist Ian Berry passed away on 13 September 2026. He covered conflicts across the world, but is best known for the photographs he made that documented the Sharpeville massacre in South Africa.
The massacre took place on 21 March 1960 when police opened fire without warning on a crowd of protesters, killing 91 people, many of whom were shot in the back as they fled from the gunfire.
On the day, around 5,000 people gathered outside a police station in Sharpeville, not far from Johannesburg. They had come there in response to a call by the Pan-Africanist Congress to protest against passbooks. These were documents the apartheid state forced all Black South Africans to carry to restrict and control their movements.
Apartheid was a racist ideology implemented by the National Party when it took power in South Africa in 1948. The government passed a series of laws, including the Group Areas Act and the Population Registration Act, that were designed to ensure white supremacy.
Read more:
Sharpeville: research on 1960 South African massacre shows the number of dead and injured was massively undercounted
Resistance to apartheid grew in response to these repressive laws and was led by the liberation movements: the African National Congress, the South African Communist Party, and the Pan-Africanist Congress.
The peaceful protest at Sharpeville would end in a massacre when the police, without issuing a warning, fired live ammunition into the crowd. Recent research shows that at least 91 people were killed and more than 230 people were injured.
At the time British photographer Ian Berry was employed at Drum, a South African magazine aimed at urban Black readers and modelled on picture magazines like Life and Picture Post. Photographs he made at Sharpeville were circulated around the world and exposed the brutal violence of the apartheid regime.
In an interview I conducted with him in July 2024 while doing research for my book, Afterimages of Apartheid, Berry recalled that several journalists and photographers were present at Sharpeville on the morning of 21 March 1960.
He told me that the celebrated South African photographer Peter Magubane had been sent on assignment elsewhere on the day of the massacre, and it was for that reason that Berry himself was sent to Sharpeville by Tom Hopkinson, the editor of Drum, on what should have been his day off.
Berry took numerous photographs of the waiting crowd. As he decided to leave, the shooting began, and he crouched down in the grass and began taking photographs. Berry’s photographs are the only existing images of the massacre as it happened.
Those photographs would help shape history. Berry’s images of Sharpeville, and photographs of its aftermath made by photographers such as Magubane and Alf Kumalo, played a central part in building support for the then-nascent global anti-apartheid solidarity movement.
Apartheid was declared a crime against humanity by the United Nations General Assembly in December 1966, and although the racist policies of the regime were widely condemned, the South African state became increasingly militarised and violent.
The work of photographers was critical in documenting the more than two decades of bitter struggle that followed the massacre until apartheid ended in 1994.
Who was Ian Berry?
Ian Berry was born in England in 1934 and moved to South Africa to begin his career as a photojournalist in 1952. He worked for the English language newspaper, the Rand Daily Mail, one of the few publications that was critical of the apartheid state, and at Drum magazine. Berry’s presence at the Sharpeville massacre changed his life. He testified at the commission of inquiry into the massacre in 1960.
In 1961 he left South Africa. The following year he joined Magnum Photos, and went on to work for The Observer, a newspaper based in London that covered global news and in the 1960s, under the editorship of David Astor, supported the struggle for racial equality in South Africa.
In 1968 he documented the Russian invasion of what was then Czechoslovakia, and made images of conflict in Ireland, Israel and Vietnam, among other places.
His series portraying life in England was published as a book in 1978, and he published two photobooks about South Africa.
His last book, Water, explores the essential place of this resource in the lives of people around the world.
Documenting a massacre
When I asked Berry whether he had been afraid of being killed at Sharpeville, he said, “It happened too fast”.
He had two Leica cameras with him – the first had already run out of film and so he had to use the second camera with a wide-angle lens. Leica produced the first lightweight, handheld cameras that contained a roll of film that could capture 36 images before being reloaded. The invention of an unobtrusive camera that could be easily transported revolutionised photography and made it possible to document events as they happened.
Berry recounted:
All I could do was photograph the people running towards me.
He only realised that the police were shooting live bullets “when a woman next to me just dropped”.
When the shooting stopped, Berry realised that he was the only person moving in the field, and that he should leave as soon as he could to prevent his film being confiscated by the police.
The apartheid regime declared a State of Emergency on 30 March 1960. Thousands of people were arrested and the opposition parties were banned and forced to operate underground. This marked the beginning of the armed struggle against apartheid.
Berry’s images were meant to be included in a special edition of Drum focusing on Sharpeville, but Jim Bailey, the magazine’s owner, was afraid the publication would be shut down by the government and refused to print the story.
Instead, Berry’s images of the massacre were sent to the Camera Press picture agency and were published around the world, including in Paris Match, Stern, Time and Life magazine.
Magubane’s famous photographs of the mass funeral at Sharpeville were included in the May 1960 issue of Drum. Berry’s photographs of the massacre itself would only be published in South Africa in October of that year.
The art of evidence
Berry’s photographs played a key evidentiary role in the proceedings of the commission of inquiry held in 1960. They showed that the police fired into the crowd as they were running away, and also proved that they reloaded their weapons.
In spite of this, no police officers or government officials were held to account for the massacre.
In the aftermath of the massacre the apartheid state passed the Indemnity Act of 1961, which prevented victims from laying charges against the government or the police. The law remains in place.
In September 2026, Lawyers for Human Rights announced that they were opening a case to overturn the indemnity law and to seek reparations on behalf of victims of the massacre and their surviving family members.
This case reminds us that Berry’s photographs are more than iconic images of South African history, they are evidence of a crime against humanity and they may finally play a part in delivering justice for the survivors of Sharpeville.
My favourite photograph by Berry shows two women protesting against apartheid just before the Sharpeville massacre took place. One of the women is shown holding a sign that reads:
We want to celebrate freedom, not fascism.
This message is carried through Berry’s work documenting resistance to oppression in many parts of the world over an astonishing career that spanned more than six decades and lives on through his photographs.
Kylie Thomas does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Tags: Academic Journalism, The Conversation, The Conversation Academic News
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