The Bang Bang Club

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Sally...

Tonight on Special Assignment...  the inside story of a small group of photographers. The bang bang Club  captured some of the most compelling pictures of South Africa's violent transition to democracy.  For Kevin Carter, Ken Oosterbroek, Joao Silva and Greg Marinovich... it was a time of exhilirating madness... and  much soul-searching...

Plus end-bit

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Nine days before South Africa's first democratic elections...   photographer Ken Oosterbroek died....  killed by a stray bullet from the gun of a peacekeeper.  He was a member of the Bang Bang Club... a group of award-winning photographers... who recorded the images of South Africa's hidden war in the townships.

On the same day... his close friend, fellow photographer Greg Marinovich, was seriously wounded.

They had finally paid the highest price... in their quest for the ultimate picture...

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They became known as the Dead Zones... the no-man's land in black townships.   Here, the bloodiest battles were fought in the violent lead-up to South Africa's first democratic elections.

It was here that a handful of photographers ventured time and time again.... to tell the story of life and death few South Africans were aware of...

All too often they were forced to decide when to press the shutter... and when to put their cameras down...

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Less than a month later, in September 1990, Marinovich was faced with a similar moral dilemma...

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Marinovich was one of four young photographers who drifted together in the turmoil of the early nineties. Marinovich, Joao Silva, Ken Oosterbroek and Kevin Carter soon became close friends. They formed the core of the group of conflict photographers who inspired magazine head lines... and became known as the Bang Bang Club.. 

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Oosterbroek, Carter, Silva and Marinovich were young and  full of life when they became professional witnesses to the bloody and vicious civil war... a war just a few kilometres from their own tranquil white suburbs...

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But there was also a gentler side to the Bang Bang Club.  In 1992, Marinovich met the Rapoo family of Meadowlands in Soweto while covering the death and mayhem. A lasting friendship developed.

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The Bang Bang Club's images were extremely violent... and they soon became controversial. Some colleagues said the four friends formed a crazy and gung-ho exclusive club. Others romanticised and glorified them...

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AD BREAK

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The Bang Bang Club lived on the edge .... and the constant exposure to violence took its toll.

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In 1993 Kevin Carter rocketed to fame with a photo of a child and a vulture in Sudan. He won praise from US president Bill Clinton and a Pulitzer prize for it... but his ethics were questioned.

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On 18 April 1994, Carter was in Johannesburg at a press interview on his Pulitzer prize. The then National Peacekeeping Force was in Thokoza... as were Carter's three friends.

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The day after Oosterbroek's death, Silva went back to strife-torn Thokoza. He threw himself into his work. The seriously wounded Marinovich had to deal with his own recovery. Carter became erratic and withdrawn. 

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Today, Silva and Marinovich have started to confront the demons of the past. They wrote a book on their story - and the story of their friends. "The Bang Bang Club: Snapshots from a Hidden War", was launched last week.

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Joao Silva and Greg Marinovich are still out there, getting the pictures....