The Invisible Line: Life And Photography of Ken Oosterbroek (The Bang-Bang Club)

Published by Kwela Books, 1998, hardcover, illustrated, large format, condition: new.

The stories of violence, heartache, hope and humanity in South Africa's transitional years are often told through photographs. This book includes many of the images captured through the lens of Ken Oosterbroek's camera before the elections of 1994.

Ken Oosterbroek ( 1962-1994) was a South African photojournalist and member of the Bang-Bang Club. He was a photographer for "The Star' newspaper in Johannesburg,  South Africa's biggest daily broadsheet. He won numerous photography awards for his work.

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 herrenvolk democatic apartheid system to a constitutional democracy. This period included much factional violence, particularly fighting between African National Congress and Inkatha Freedom Party supporters, after the lifting of the bans on both political parties. The Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging and other groups were also involved in the violence.

On 18 April 1994, during a firefight between the National Peacekeeping Force and African National Congress supporters in the Thokoza township, friendly fire killed Oosterbroek and seriously injured Marinovich. An inquest into Oosterbroek's death began in 1995. The magistrate ruled that no party should be blamed for the death. In 1999, peacekeeper Brian Mkhize told Marinovich and Silva that he believed that the bullet that killed Oosterbroek had come from the National Peacekeeping Force.

In July 1994, Kevin Carter committed suicide. On 23 October 2010, Silva stepped on a land mine while on patrol with U.S. soldiers in Kandahar, Afghanistan and lost both legs below the knee.

                           A film about the group, also titled The Bang Bang Club, directed by Steven Silver premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2010.