Bailey's African Historical Archive

Artist biography:

Bob Gosani started off at Drum magazine as a messenger but soon moved to the photographic department where he became Jürgen Schadeberg's darkroom assistant. He later became one of Drum's best photographers.

Schadeberg said that 'Gosani stood out because in the early 1950s good black photographers and press photographers in particular were unheard of'.

Some of his pictures have become iconic images of the 1950s in South Africa e.g. the picture of 'Women during the Defiance Campaign' in 1952; Nelson Mandela sparring with his boxing club's star boxer of the time, Jerry Moloi (taken on the rooftop of the South African Associated Newspapers office in Johannesburg); and Nelson Mandela outside court in 1958, (triumphant because the prosecution had withdrawn charges in the Treason Trial).