The Bang Bang Club - Greg Marinovich & Joao Silva

An unforgettable account of the lives of a group of four South African photo journalists living and working through the last days of Apartheid in the early 90's. The book was brought together by 2 of the group's members (Greg Marinovich and Joao Silva) and published in 2000. The title comes from the name that was given to the group by friends and acquaintances worldwide, echoing the extremes they often went to in documenting the chaos of war and the plight of its victims. If any of you saw and enjoyed the recent documentary "War Photographer" by Christian Frei on the work of James Nachtwey then The Bang Bang Club is definitely on a similar wave length. What I found most compelling was the level of intimacy in the writing; the details of the daily lives of these four men. The result is a harrowing vision of the personal desperation that war reporters have to deal with and the ongoing struggle to justify the 'neutrality' of their work when confronted with very live, very raw and very real atrocities.