That Reminds Me...

Having just pixelated my brain on the interweb looking at all sorts of rubbish like short films that quality passed by, regurgitated articles with piss poor photography and so called news items that just had to include a celebrity, i was really thankful to Christian Parkinson for tweeting a link to the blog pages of someone i knew of, but have never met.

Greg Marinovich is a photographer that some of you will know, and some of you will not. If you don't know him, you are maybe a little too young to know of his exploits in Africa and other parts of the world, resulting in a book called The Bang Bang Club, co written with fellow photographer Joao Silva. So exited was i at seeing the link, i dug out my 9 year old copy of the book and reminded myself of the journey that Greg and his fellow photographers took through the Township wars of South Africa in the early 1990's.

Found it.....

I remembered reading the book the first time around, so hooked into the story that i read the book in a day. Yes, it's an old book now, read by anyone who was around at the time who had an interest in photography, news, and what it took to get the stories and the pictures out to a wider world. But that was not the story that gripped me. Anyone who has even an inkling that they would like to get into this line of work should read this book, not just for the stories of how they went about their work, but for the human misery, death and innocence lost, not only of the people of the townships of South Africa, but also the photographers themselves.

An old book, but still very relevant to the world today.

This post isn't meant to be a book review. I am many years too late. And i will not go into what happens to the members of the bang bang club, for it is a story best told by the authors, and the conclusions best left to your imaginations. But i tell you this... you will read a book that is both thoughtful and yet savage. It will churn you up inside and give your brain and your conscience something to think about weeks after you have read it, even now, so many years after the events themselves.

So for now, i am going to turn off my computer and my mobile phone, and get to grips again with a real piece of substance that is still relevant in todays world.  I urge you to do the same.

Paul Martin
http://www.media-attention.co.uk