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Nelson Mandela looking through the bars of his cell at Robben Island Prison after returning there in 1994.
They are among the best-known images of modern times, and the man behind them, Jürgen Schadeberg, died at the age of 89, ending an era of photography that spans more than seven decades.
The German-born photographer’s collection of 200,000 negatives includes some of Madiba’s most famous shots, topping the former South African president’s 27-year prison term.
“This is where he studied, did push-ups and reflected on the goal of liberating his people,” Schadeberg said of his 1994 photo in notes given to CNN by his wife Claudia.
Schadeberg first photographed Mandela with activist Ruth First in 1951 and captured his most iconic moments 40 years later.
He was in South Africa when Mandela was released from prison in February 1990, which he described in his memoirs as “one of the most electrifying and exciting moments in the country’s history.”
Rejected by the editors
Born in Berlin in 1931, Jürgen Schadeberg lived through the horrors of World War II in Berlin. “The Nazi regime controlled all aspects of life,” he wrote in the book.
He was the only son of an actress who married a British soldier at the end of the war. They left Berlin for South Africa, leaving Schadeberg to fend for himself.
After pursuing a career as a photographer in Hamburg, he made the decision to move to Johannesburg in 1950. However, he faced rejection from white photo editors when he started and a story about the dangers of asbestos to mainly black miners was rejected. by eight editors.
“They ordered me not to talk to anyone or go near the mines. My first trip to ‘real Africa’ was, in the end, disturbing and depressing,” he recalls in “The Way I See It.”
He turned to Drum, a monthly magazine aimed at a black audience, although he was told it would be an unsatisfactory job and disastrous for his career because “it was about natives.”
The first person he was introduced to the office was Drum’s chief journalist, Henry Nxumalo, who helped Schadeberg integrate into black communities and photograph musicians like Makeba and Masekela.
Schadeberg wrote in his memoirs that Nxumalo was murdered in 1957 by an unknown assailant while researching a story about a white doctor who had reportedly screwed up a large number of abortions.
Schadeberg said he was “devastated” by the loss of a man he described as his “only friend and a man of great courage, personality, character and humor.”
Document the inequalities of apartheid
After eight years at Drum magazine, he left in 1959 and became chief photographer for the Sunday Times, South Africa’s leading Sunday newspaper.
“I was saddened to hear the loss of another of Drum’s original 1950s photographers,” said Prospero Bailey, curator of Drum magazine.
“Jürgen’s unique eye left an indelible mark on the social photographic history of the country through not only his own work, but also the work of the photographers he trained at Drum,” added Bailey.
He later moved to Europe and worked as a freelance photojournalist, spending time in London, where he met his future wife, Claudia.
Seeing her at a party, he immediately thought she had the “most beautiful curly brown hair and a beautiful face,” but it wasn’t until they went for a drink after she attended one of his exhibitions at the Air Street Gallery that she realized. “She might be interested in me too,” he later wrote.
“Jürgen focused his life and his goal on documenting human rights and social justice issues wherever they are found,” his wife told CNN. “He was a documentary photographer with a deep sense of using his camera to reveal our multifaceted human condition.”
Challenging an unfair system
Claudia told CNN that Schadeberg had “a fiery spirit” and always wanted to “challenge an unjust system.”
He said in 1955, while covering the treason trial in Johannesburg, where Mandela and other political and academic leaders were arrested and charged with treason.
Schadeberg was angered when white police attacked his fellow Drum photographer, black apprentice Peter Magubane.
Instinctively he jumped on the policeman’s back to stop him and protect Magubane. They were arrested and Claudia said the incident encapsulated their ideals and personality. Of Drum’s original group of photojournalists, only Magubane is still alive.
Before returning to South Africa in 1985, Schadeberg lived in London, Spain, New York and France.
During this period, he taught at the New School in New York and the Central School of Art and Design in London, at the same time that he would curate several important exhibitions.
Schadeberg is survived by his wife Claudia and six children.
CNN’s Eleni Giokos contributed to this report.
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