Ian Berry: The Photojournalist Who Documented the Sharpeville Massacre
- Veteran photojournalist Ian Berry died on 13 September 2026, leaving behind a visual record of global conflict that is anchored by his documentation of the 1960 Sharpeville massacre...
- On 21 March 1960, approximately 5,000 protesters gathered outside a police station in Sharpeville, near Johannesburg, responding to a call by the Pan-Africanist Congress to demonstrate against passbooks—restrictive...
- At the time, Berry was employed at Drum, a South African magazine aimed at urban Black readers.
Veteran photojournalist Ian Berry died on 13 September 2026, leaving behind a visual record of global conflict that is anchored by his documentation of the 1960 Sharpeville massacre in South Africa. Born in England in 1934, Berry moved to South Africa in 1952, where his career behind the lens exposed the brutal realities of the apartheid state to an international audience.
Documenting the Sharpeville Massacre
On 21 March 1960, approximately 5,000 protesters gathered outside a police station in Sharpeville, near Johannesburg, responding to a call by the Pan-Africanist Congress to demonstrate against passbooks—restrictive documents that the apartheid government forced all Black South Africans to carry. Without warning, police opened fire with live ammunition into the crowd, killing at least 91 people and injuring more than 230 others, with many shot in the back as they ran.
At the time, Berry was employed at Drum, a South African magazine aimed at urban Black readers. Speaking in a July 2024 interview during research for the book Afterimages of Apartheid, Berry recalled that he was sent to Sharpeville on what should have been his day off because editor Tom Hopkinson had assigned photographer Peter Magubane elsewhere. Armed with two Leica cameras, Berry photographed the waiting crowd before crouching in the grass when the shooting began. His images remain the only existing photographs of the massacre as it unfolded.
It happened too fast.
Ian Berry
Global Impact and Magnum Career
Berry’s photographs from Sharpeville, alongside the subsequent documentation by photographers like Magubane and Alf Kumalo, circulated globally and fueled the nascent international anti-apartheid movement. After testifying at the 1960 commission of inquiry into the massacre, Berry left South Africa in 1961. The following year, he joined Magnum Photos and began working for London’s The Observer newspaper under editor David Astor, who actively supported racial equality in South Africa.
Over the decades, Berry’s assignments took him across the globe to document conflicts, including the 1968 Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia, as well as conflict in Ireland, Israel, and Vietnam. His later projects included a 1978 photobook chronicling life in England, two dedicated photobooks about South Africa, and a final book titled Water, which explored the vital role of the resource in human lives worldwide.