The Bang-Bang Club

The Bang-Bang Club was a group of four young war photographers — Ken Oosterbroek, Kevin Carter, Greg Marinovich and Joao Silva — who, as friends and war correspondents during the last years of apartheid, took many of the photographs that encapsulate the final violent years of racist white South Africa.

Two of them won Pulitzer Prizes for individual photos. Ken, the oldest and a mentor to the others, died after being accidentally shot while working. Kevin, the most troubled of the four, committed suicide weeks after winning his Pulitzer for a photograph of a starving baby in the Sudanese famine. Written by Greg Marinovich and Joao Silva, The Bang-Bang Club tells their uniquely powerful war stories, the stresses, tensions and moral dilemmas of working in situations of extreme violence, pain and suffering, the relationships between the four, and the story of the end of apartheid.

An immensely powerful, riveting and harrowing book, and an invaluable contribution to the literary genre of war photography. An eye-opening book for readers of Susan Sontag.