With a stunning collection of lifeworks spanning more than seventy years, including his world-famous photo of Nelson Mandela looking through the bars of his former prison cell, Jürgen Schadeberg is the latest photographer to receive the Leica Hall of Fame Award.

Leica Press Release

Leica Galerie Wetzlar to showcase Schadeberg’s iconic work from November 16 through February 17, 2019

November 16, 2018 – With a stunning collection of lifeworks spanning more than seventy years, including his world-famous photo of Nelson Mandela looking through the bars of his former prison cell, Jürgen Schadeberg has never lost his humanistic view of the world. Many of his pictures have become timeless icons and because of this, he is the latest photographer to receive the Leica Hall of Fame Award.

Leica Camera honors exceptional photographers whose view of the world has changed it or set things in motion with a place in the Leica Hall of Fame, and Schadeberg has certainly earned his place in this prestigious collection.

As a photojournalist and representative of Life Photography, Schadeberg has always shown an impartial interest in the living conditions of his contemporaries. He always approached and treated the people he portrayed with empathy and respect, no matter what their nationality or color of their skin. Born and raised in Berlin, he emigrated to South Africa in 1950 and established himself there as a photojournalist. Marked by his own experiences of European racism, he encountered a deeply divided country in which the black majority of the population was brutally oppressed by the white minority. Unprejudiced, passionate and inquisitive: these character traits enabled Schadeberg to shoot again and again in situations and places where most of his white contemporaries would never have dared to go. He became a chronicler of an epoch, not least through his work for Drum Magazine, the most important forum for the black majority of the population in South Africa.

Schadeberg left South Africa in 1964 and worked during the sixties and seventies as a freelance photographer in Europe and the USA. Here too, he remained true to his empathic approach to photography. He first returned to Johannesburg in 1985, where he concentrated on the second South African chapter of his photographic work until 2007.

The Leica Galerie Wetzlar will showcase Schadeberg’s work from today through February 17, 2019. The Galerie is open from Monday to Friday between 10 a.m. and 8 p.m., and on Saturdays and Sundays from 10 a.m to 6 p.m. Admission is free. Further information can be found at www.leica-camera.com.

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