Photographing a South African form of sudden death

Abstract

In this article, I examine two press photographs of the same death scene – the bodies of two anti-apartheid activists murdered in Maseru, Lesotho, in 1985, taken as they lay together on the floor of a mortuary. The activists were murdered by an apartheid hit-squad under the command of Eugene de Kock. Extrapolating from a visual analysis of the two photographs – taken by different photographers – I investigate the relationship between particular photographic images of death and trauma, and the national forms such trauma might take. In addressing this question, I ruminate on the relationship between death and photography in general, on the epistemological status of photographs as evidential fields, and on the relationship between global and national image discourses. I focus on the propensity of such images – which may have been produced with a journalistic agenda in mind, to spur the viewer into political or civic action in response to the trauma they depict – to turn into various forms of aesthetic image.

Keywords:

• apartheid
• death
• photography
• South Africa
• trauma
• TRC

Additional information

Notes on contributors

James Sey

James Sey is a Research Associate at the Visual Identities in Art and Design Research Centre, University of Johannesburg.