lumogeny

Styles / Documentary & reportage

Drum magazine photography

1951–1965. Johannesburg. Also called Drum photography or The Drum photographers.

Where the lights stand
seen from above1 sun, highcameraSchematic, not to scale
  1. Key: the sun, about 45° to the camera’s left, high, hard.

Key high: about 30–45° above eye level, angled down.

Schematic, not to scale: worked out from the style’s choices. No set-up of this style has been rendered yet.

Where you have seen it

The photographs that define it are still in copyright, so they are linked below rather than shown.

Black-and-white pictures made for Drum, the magazine of black urban South Africa in the 1950s: cover girls and fashion posed in a small studio against a paper roll under flood lamps, or out on city steps, rooftops and mine dumps; singers, boxers and couples caught mid-dance by flash in Sophiatown; undercover exposés and the crowds of the Defiance Campaign, the Sophiatown removals and the Treason Trial. Often square frames from a twin-lens reflex, oblong 35 mm ones for news; flash at night, lamps or daylight by day. People play to the camera, and the pictures run as captioned picture stories.

Shoot sheet for your kit The photographs

How the look is made

  1. Photograph city life as your readers live it, in dance halls, shebeens, boxing gyms, weddings and township streets, and leave out the 'tribal' picture of Africa.
  2. Pose cover girls, singers and fashion in a makeshift studio, a paper roll on a pole and a flood lamp or two, leaving the lamp and the backdrop's edge in the frame if they fall there, or out on the steps of public buildings, on rooftops or a mine dump; let them perform for the lens, and stage a gag when the story needs one.
  3. At night, fire a flash from the camera and freeze the dancers mid-step, the band mid-chorus and the raid as it happens.
  4. When the story is an injustice, get the picture however it can be got: beside a reporter working undercover, from a rooftop overlooking the yard, or with the camera hidden.
  5. Frame whole figures at middle distance, in the square of a twin-lens reflex for features and often in the oblong of a 35 mm camera for news, and print full-range black and white for the page.
  6. Lay the pictures out as picture stories with punchy headlines and captions, and put glamour, sport, crime and exposé in the same issue.

Shoot sheet for your kit

Fill in your camera, lenses and lights, and the sheet says which light plays each part, what to work around and where to start on your camera. Without a kit it starts on a full-frame camera.

Step 1

Light

1 sun, highcameraSchematic, not to scale

  1. Key: the sun, about 45° to the camera’s left, high, hard.

  • Key high: about 30–45° above eye level, angled down.
Shadow edges
Shadows with crisp outlines, cast by a small or distant light: direct sun, a bare flash, a spotlight. Shadows that fade gradually from light to dark, cast by a large or diffused light: a window, a softbox, a cloudy sky.
Shadow depth
Dark shadows that still hold some detail (a high lighting ratio, about 4:1 to 8:1: the shadow side two to three stops darker).
Shape & form
Light from the camera’s own position (an on-camera flash, a ring light, a frontal softbox) fills every hollow, so faces and objects look flat, with little shape.

How the style is lit

  • On-camera flash at night in dance halls, shebeens and clubs, on police raids and on the night the Sophiatown removals began, freezing the action against black or throwing hard shadows on the wall behind.
  • Hard daylight outdoors for cover girls and fashion on city steps, rooftops and mine dumps; flat, overcast daylight in the township streets.
  • One or two flood lamps on stands and a paper roll hung from a pole in a small studio, for cover girls, fashion and personalities, often with a stand or the backdrop's edge in the frame; for head-and-shoulders portraits, often a single lamp from one side, at times against a dark curtain.

This plan is worked out from the style’s choices, so it is drawn as a schematic. One way to get the light, not a record of how any photograph was lit.

Step 2

Lens and settings

Start at

40 mmf/5.61/250 sISO 200

On a full-frame camera: the same depth of field and exposure as the style’s own numbers, in the same light. Then meter and adjust.

  • The style’s f/9.5 on 6 × 6 cm gives about the depth of field of f/5.2 on full frame.
Then
35–50 mm · f/5.6–f/16 · 1/250–1/25 s · ISO 100–400 on 6 × 6 cm, inferred from the gear and the look. Rolleiflex (75 or 80 mm, about 41–44 mm equivalent) and Leica (35–50 mm) on fast black-and-white roll film; flash at night near f/8–f/11 and 1/25–1/50 s, 1/125–1/250 s at f/8–f/16 by day. The cameras are documented; the numbers are inferred.
Focal length
Roughly the eye’s own perspective; no visible distortion.
Angle
The camera at the height of a standing person or of the subject.
Distance
Whole figures and their immediate surroundings.
Balance
The subject in the middle, the frame balanced around it.
Crop & fill
The subject shown small within its setting, which explains it.
Instant
Movement stopped dead by a fast shutter or flash.
Step 3

Direct

Cover girls and singers stand full length, a hand on the hip or an arm raised, grinning straight at the lens on a paper roll, city steps or a rooftop; couples dance cheek to cheek or jive mid-step for the flash; staff act out comic set-ups around a model; in news and street pictures people carry on as they are, or glance up mid-action.

Head & gaze
Looking straight into the camera, so the subject meets the viewer’s eye.
Arms & hands
One or both hands on the hips, elbows out, opening a triangle of space beside the waist.
Expression
A smile, posed or natural, lips closed or showing teeth.
Several people
People talking, playing, working or dancing together, absorbed in each other rather than the camera.
The moment
People photographed as they are, unaware or unconcerned.
With the sitter
The subject performs for the camera and shapes the picture.
Step 4

Style the set

The readers' own smart city fashion: suits and hats, berets, fitted dresses, swimsuits for cover girls; a paper roll in a makeshift studio with the lamp and its edges left in the frame, or real steps, rooftops, dance halls and township streets; news and street pictures left as found.

Clothes
Outfits the wearers put together to be seen, designer labels included: layering, sneakers, statement pieces.
Set & props
A painted, cloth, paper or seamless backdrop behind the subject. A real place picked for its look as the setting for a shoot, not the subjects’ own: a street, a field, a palace, a hotel room.
How much is styled
Nothing dressed, made up, moved or added for the picture.
Step 5

Finish

Monochrome
Rich blacks, clean whites and every grey between. A black-and-white scale pushed towards pure black and pure white, with few middle greys.
Film
Roll film in a medium-format camera, often square. A small handheld camera: quick, mobile, grainy when pushed.
Post-production
Nothing changed beyond exposure and development.
Shown as
A sequence with text that tells a story.
Shown in
Pictures made for magazine pages and spreads.
Frame
A square frame.

Stay away from deadpan, soft focus & diffusion, composite & montage, long exposure, objective & scientific, traditional & ceremonial dress and stiff & held still.

Before you shoot it

These are real, often named people photographed under apartheid: protesters, families evicted from Sophiatown, mourners at Sharpeville, and prisoners photographed naked without their knowledge in the tauza pictures; the pin-ups and cover-girl pictures also framed young women for a male readership. The photographs are in copyright: license them from Baileys African History Archive (the Drum archive) or the Schadeberg estate, credit the photographers and name the sitters where known. For new work, commission working South African photographers.

Where to see it

From open collections, shown whole with their credits. Later photographs are linked, not shown, while they are in copyright.

In copyright, so linked

With other styles

The opposite: Malian studio portraiture. Bamako's studios pose private clients against hung patterned cloth for the family album; Drum's studio pictures put cover girls and personalities against bare paper or a mottled backdrop under flood lamps, with the stands often in shot, and Drum sends its models out to steps, rooftops and dance floors for a mass readership. Choose plain paper or the street, not the patterned cloth.

Pairs with French humanist photography. Both work for the illustrated magazine with a normal lens; borrow the humanists' patient eye for street life, but keep Drum's flash, its subjects' performance for the camera and its readiness to expose an injustice.

The opposite: Postwar couture fashion photography. Postwar couture also posed models against city architecture, but for an elite's clothes and with retouched polish; Drum's cover girls wear township fashion, grin at the lens and are printed straight.

Pairs with Picture-magazine photo essay. Drum lays its pictures out as picture stories like Life and Picture Post (Hopkinson edited both Picture Post and Drum), but its subjects perform for a flash or a lamp, and glamour shares the issue with exposé.

Sources

  1. Drum (South African magazine), Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drum_(South_African_magazine) (founded 1951 as African Drum by Bob Crisp and Jim Bailey; editors Sampson 1951–55, Stein 1955–58, Hopkinson 1958–62; Schadeberg main photographer, trained Gosani and Cole, Magubane joined later, Khumalo (as spelt there) on staff; Nxumalo 'Mr Drum' and the potato-farm exposé; heyday between the Defiance Campaign and Sharpeville; crime, investigation, sex and sport illustrated with photography; Sophiatown bulldozed 1955; fortnightly supplement of the Golden City Post by May 1965)
  2. Drum Magazine, South African History Online: https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/drum-magazine (first established as 'The African Drum' by Robert Crisp; Bailey 'took over the magazine in 1951', moved it to Johannesburg and renamed it Drum; 'Bethal Today', March 1952, with Schadeberg's photographs; 'an eight-page photographic essay on the 1952 Defiance Campaign', an edition that sold a record 65,000; Gosani from messenger to darkroom assistant to photographer; Magubane hired 1955 as driver; Cole, Kumalo, Xashimba, Naransamy and others; Ranjith Kally's 1957 shebeen pictures; East and West African editions; 'bright covers, jazz, girls and crime stories')
  3. Jürgen Schadeberg, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%BCrgen_Schadeberg (born Berlin 1931, died 2020; trained at the Deutsche Presse-Agentur; to South Africa 1950; joined Drum 1951 as photographer and layout artist; mentor to Gosani, Cole and Magubane; Dolly Rathebe in a bikini on a mine dump for a Drum cover and their arrest under the Immorality Act; Defiance Campaign 1952, Sophiatown removals 1955, Treason Trial 1956, Sharpeville funeral 1960; left Drum 1959)
  4. Kylie Thomas, 'Jürgen Schadeberg: chronicler of life across apartheid's divides', The Conversation, 1 September 2020: https://theconversation.com/jurgen-schadeberg-chronicler-of-life-across-apartheids-divides-145390 (chief photographer and photo editor; trained Cole, Gosani, Kumalo and Magubane; Dancing at the Ritz 1952; Sharpeville Funeral 1960 from a chartered plane; fashion, jazz and dancing; photographers who came from Europe 'brought along new techniques and ways of seeing' as picture magazines rose, Life, Look and Picture Post abroad and Drum and Zonk! in South Africa, which 'published photo-essays')
  5. Paul Gallagher, 'The World As He Sees It: An Exclusive Interview with Legendary Photographer Jürgen Schadeberg', Flashbak, 9 July 2020: https://flashbak.com/the-world-as-he-sees-it-an-exclusive-interview-with-legendary-photographer-jurgen-schadeberg-430449/ ('In my early photographic days I had no influences and just went by instinct'; only 'in later life' did he admire Cartier-Bresson, Eugene Smith and Salgado; so no humanist influence on the Drum work is claimed here)
  6. Sean O'Toole, 'Schadeberg can't beat the Drum years', Mail & Guardian, 12 September 2014: https://mg.co.za/article/2014-09-12-schadeberg-cant-beat-the-drum-years/ (Schadeberg's Rolleiflex in a Sophiatown dance hall, 1955; Sophiatown demolition and Treason Trial)
  7. Jürgen Schadeberg estate, galleries 'Fifties Glamour' and 'Sophiatown': https://www.jurgenschadeberg.com/galleries/FiftiesGlamour/default.htm and https://www.jurgenschadeberg.com/galleries/Sophiatown/default.htm (square-format pictures of models on location; most of the Fifties Glamour frames made in a small studio with a paper roll hung from a pole and flood lamps on stands, often in the frame, and single-lamp head-and-shoulders portraits, some against a dark curtain (14, 29, 30); flash at night in dance halls and on the removals; Drum archive captions embedded in the images: Fifties Glamour 17 'SAED:FASHION:PERSONALITY:AUGUST 1952' (studio, backdrop edge and lamp in shot), 18 'SAED:SOCIAL:PERSONALITY:DANCE:DRUM MARCH 1952' (before curtains), 19 'SAED:BEAUTY:PERSONALITY:MODEL: DRUM MARCH 1952' (on the steps of a public building) and 21 'SAED:SOCIAL:BEAUTY:JUN1958' (Gosani, on location), rights 'Drum Social Histories / Africa Media Online'; Sophiatown 08 'First day of Sophiatown removals - 10th February 1955 night')
  8. Bob Gosani, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Gosani (1934–1972; messenger, darkroom assistant, then photographer; tauza pictures taken secretly from a nurses' home overlooking the Fort prison, published in Drum to public outcry; Mandela sparring with Jerry Moloi on a rooftop)
  9. Ntongela Masilela, 'South African Photography in the Literary Era of the Sophiatown Renaissance' (Fotogeschichte 10, no. 36, 1990), on Pitzer College's Sophiatown site: https://pzacad.pitzer.edu/NAM/sophia/writers/gosani/gosaniS.htm (Gosani apprenticed in the darkroom under Schadeberg; Drum photographers disguised themselves or had themselves arrested to get pictures; 'visual substance and glamour' to township life)
  10. Peter Magubane, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Magubane (1932–2024; joined Drum 1954 as darkroom assistant and driver under Schadeberg; Sharpeville 1960; Leica hidden in a loaf of bread and a milk carton at a trial where the press was banned)
  11. Ernest Cole (photographer), Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Cole_(photographer) (joined Drum 1958 as Schadeberg's assistant; House of Bondage, Random House, 1967)
  12. Tom Hopkinson, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Hopkinson (editor of Picture Post 1940–1950, of Drum from 1958; encouraged Magubane; organised editions in Ghana and Nigeria)
  13. Mohamed Keita, 'Remembering Henry Nxumalo, pioneer under apartheid', Committee to Protect Journalists, 3 January 2012: https://cpj.org/2012/01/remembering-henry-nxumalo-pioneer-under-apartheid/ (Nxumalo, 'Mr Drum', got himself arrested and 'spent five days' in the Fort, Johannesburg's central prison; the exposé 'caused uproar')
  14. Louisa's Twenty-First (Bob Gosani, March 1955), Science Museum Group collection: https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co8437527/louisas-twenty-first and Women against Passes (Gosani, January 1956): https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co8432080/women-against-passes (prints from the 'Drum' exhibition, Impressions Gallery, 10 December 1988 – 21 January 1989; Women against Passes is a square image, 273 × 273 mm)
  15. Art Institute of Chicago collection API: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/search?q=Schadeberg (Schadeberg prints of 1951–1960 such as Sophiatown (We Won't Move), 1955, image 19.2 × 19.2 cm, First Day Sophiatown Removals, 1955, printed 1961, image 19 × 19.2 cm (266880), and Benjie of the Harlem Swingsters, 1952, image 21.6 × 21.6 cm; Gosani and Magubane prints from Schadeberg's estate titled with Drum captions)
  16. Schadeberg can't beat the Drum years, Sean O'Toole, Mail & Guardian (12 September 2014): https://mg.co.za/article/2014-09-12-schadeberg-cant-beat-the-drum-years/ (Schadeberg walked into a Sophiatown dancehall with his Rolleiflex and photographed a dancing couple, one in a beret and two-piece suit, the other in a flat cap and boiler suit, eyes pinched shut: the picture he called Township Shuffle)

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