The Bang-Bang Club was a group of four conflict photographers, Kevin Carter, Greg Marinovich, Ken Oosterbroek, and João Silva, active within the townships of South Africa between 1990 and 1994 during the transition from the apartheid system to democracy.
Let us set the record straight: there never was such a creature, there never was a club, and there never were just the four of us in some kind of silver halide cult – dozens of journalists covered the violence during the period from Nelson Mandela's release from jail to the first fully democratic election.
[5] Marinovich said of the key members of the Bang-Bang Club "We discovered that one of the strongest links among us was questions about the morality of what we do: when do you press the shutter release and when do you cease being a photographer?
[citation needed] The Bang-Bang Club are referenced in the 1996 Manic Street Preachers song "Kevin Carter" from their fourth album Everything Must Go.
The fight against apartheid on the way to democracy was becoming a bloodbath at this time and Desmond Tutu, Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town, South Africa wrote in the foreword of the book The Bang-bang Club: Snapshots From A Hidden War, 2000.
They captured some riveting moments on film, such as a gruesome necklacing (Kevin Carter), and the barbaric turning on a helpless victim by a baying crowd from one or other side of the conflict (Greg Marinovich).
[12] Kevin Carter won the Pulitzer for Featured Photography in 1994 for his 1993 photograph of a vulture that appeared to be stalking a starving child in southern Sudan.