Alf Khumalo

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Alfred Khumalo (b. 1930) (better known as Alf Khumalo) (also spelled Kumalo) is a South African photographer.

Contents

[edit] Overview

Alf Khumalo was born in Alexandra near Johannesburg. He first worked in a garage doing various jobs and then started freelancing for various publications, selling his photographs where he could. He did a lot of work for the Bantu World.

In 1956, he found a permanent position at the Golden City Post.

In 1963, while working for Drum magazine, he was selected together with Harry Mashabela to go and shoot a story about African students in the Iron Curtain countries. The two made the front cover of the next edition of the magazine, Drum men go to Europe.

While in London, he interviewed Cassius Clay and then found out that he had won first place in a photographic competition. The prize was an Austin Cambridge motor car. [1]

Kumalo had been encouraged to enter by David Hazelhurst, the editor of Drum.

Kumalo had used his African names Mangaliso Dukuza because he wanted the judging to be impartial and not influenced by his reputation. A picture of him and his award was published by the Star on its front page. A lot of black people talked about it for days afterwards, because in those days they would only get on to the front pages of white newspapers if they were thieves. [1]

Despite the prospect of being arrested and assaulted, Khumalo kept on taking pictures, sometimes at personal cost. David Hazelhurst recalled: One day in 1963, when I was editor of Drum magazine, Alf Khumalo walked into my office carrying a picture. It showed a burly policeman delivering a vicious kick between the legs of reporter Harry Mashabela from behind. Such was the power of the kick you could see the shape of his boot exploding through the front of Mashabela’ trousers.

It was the year of the jackboot of John Vorster, habeas corpus had disappeared, the 90-day-detention without trial Act had given policemen a license to kill and assault behind closed doors with impunity.

The police hated journalists – and photographers in particular, for their pictures portrayed the truth about an evil system, and Kumalo, despite warnings, risked a severe beating to take the Mashabela picture. He had tried to sell it to several papers with no success. [2]

However, Hazelhurst splashed the picture across two pages of Drum.

Over the years he has photographed and documented many of the historic moments in recent South African history. These include the Treason Trial, the Rivonia Trial, the emergence of Black Consciousness, the Student Uprising of 1976 and the Codesa talks. This was despite numerous periods of detention, arrests and official harassment.

His work has appeared in international newspapers like The Observer, New York Times, New York Post, and the Sunday Independent. Locally, he also worked for Drum magazine and the long defunct Rand Daily Mail. [3]

In order to assist the upcoming generation of South African photographers, Khumalo opened a photographic school in Diepkloof Soweto. The school offers nine month courses designed to train photographers from disadvantaged backgrounds. [4]

[edit] Books

  • Mandela : echoes of an era / by Alf Kumalo ; text by Es'kia Mphahlele, Penguin Books, 1990, ISBN 0-14-014316-5
  • Alf Kumalo: South African Photographer, Itala Vivan & Alf Kumalo, Leonardo arte, ISBN 8-8-7813384-1

[edit] Film and video

[edit] Solo Exhibitions

  • 2004 - 59th Session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York - a collection of his life’s work - the exhibition was much acclaimed [4]

[edit] Selected group exhibitions

  • 2002 - Shooting Resistance: South African Photography 1976 - 1994 - The exhibition documented the period of upheavals that began with the student-led Soweto uprising of 1976 and culminated in the collapse of the apartheid regime and the introduction of democratic elections in 1994. Included were photographs by Alf Khumalo, Jürgen Schadeberg and Peter Magubane.
  • 2006 - Madiba: Public and Private - Nelson Mandela Foundation, Johannesburg. Works by photographers Alf Kumalo and Jürgen Schadeberg. . Schadeberg's photos are of the public images of Mandela from the 1950s, during the Defiance Campaign and before Mandela's imprisonment, while Kumalo's are of Mandela's private life, particularly of his family. Many of Kumalo's pictures were taken of Mandela's growing family, to send to Mandela in jail.

[edit] Awards

  • 2004 – South African Order of Ikhamanga in Silver awarded for his excellent contribution to documentary photography and journalism in South Africa. [5]
  • 2005 - South African National Editors Forum Nat Nakasa Award for Media Integrity for displaying courageous journalism throughout his professional career. [2]

[edit] External links

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b "Alf Kumalo celebrates 50 years in journalism", mediaweb, mediaweb. Retrieved on 2007-05-21. 
  2. ^ a b "Veteran photographer Alf Kumalo wins the 2005 Nat Nakasa Award", SA National Editors Forum. Retrieved on 2007-05-17. 
  3. ^ Majavu, Mandisi. "Alf Khumalo: 5 decades in photos", SA Information, 2004-11-05. Retrieved on 2007-05-16. 
  4. ^ a b Mynhardt, Izane. "Interview: Alfred Khumalo", New Visions Africa. Retrieved on 2007-05-16. 
  5. ^ "Alfred Khumalo", S A Government, 2004-11-10. Retrieved on 2007-05-16.