Bob Gosani
Encyclopedia
Overview
Bob Gosani started off at Drum magazine as a messenger but soon moved to the photographic department where he became Jürgen SchadebergJürgen Schadeberg
-Overview:Jürgen Schadeberg was born in Berlin in 1931. In 1950, he moved to South Africa to rejoin his family and joined Drum magazine as official photographer and layout artist....
’s darkroom assistant. He later became one of Drum’s best photographers.
Schadeberg said that "Gosani stood out because in the early 1950s good black photographers and press photographers in particular were unheard of".
Some of his pictures have become iconic images of the 1950’s in South Africa e.g. the picture of Women during the Defiance Campaign
Defiance Campaign
The Defiance Campaign against Unjust Laws was presented by the African National Congress at a conference held in Bloemfontein, South Africa in December 1951....
in 1952 , Nelson Mandela
Nelson Mandela
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999, and was the first South African president to be elected in a fully representative democratic election. Before his presidency, Mandela was an anti-apartheid activist, and the leader of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing...
sparring with his boxing club's star boxer of the time, Jerry Moloi (taken on the rooftop of the South African Associated Newspapers office in Johannesburg
Johannesburg
Johannesburg also known as Jozi, Jo'burg or Egoli, is the largest city in South Africa, by population. Johannesburg is the provincial capital of Gauteng, the wealthiest province in South Africa, having the largest economy of any metropolitan region in Sub-Saharan Africa...
) and Nelson Mandela outside court in 1958, (triumphant because the prosecution had withdrawn charges in the Treason Trial
Treason Trial
The Treason Trial was a trial in which 156 people, including Nelson Mandela, were arrested in a raid and accused of treason in South Africa in 1956....
).
Perhaps his most famous sequence of pictures was the sequence he took of the humiliating and degrading Tauza dance that naked prisoners were forced to perform in the courtyard of the notorious Johannesburg
Johannesburg
Johannesburg also known as Jozi, Jo'burg or Egoli, is the largest city in South Africa, by population. Johannesburg is the provincial capital of Gauteng, the wealthiest province in South Africa, having the largest economy of any metropolitan region in Sub-Saharan Africa...
prison, The Fort
Constitution Hill, Johannesburg
The Constitution Hill precinct, located at the western end of the suburb Hillbrow in Johannesburg, is the seat of the Constitutional Court of South Africa. The first court session in the new building at this location was held in February 2004.-History:...
, in Hillbrow. This dance was a humiliating way of ensuring that the prisoners were not smuggling any weapons or contraband into their cells after a day’s hard labour. It essentially involved thrusting their rectums up into the air for inspection by the warders. Gosani managed to photograph the Tauza dance secretly from the top floor of a nurses’ home overlooking the prison. As a result of the pictures being published in Drum, there was a public outcry and the apartheid government was forced to act.