Ian Berry, the Magnum Photos photojournalist whose photographs of the 1960 Sharpeville Massacre served as evidence in South African court proceedings, died on 13 September at the age of 92.

On 21 March 1960, Berry was in the township of Sharpeville, where 5,000 to 7,000 people had gathered around a police station to protest. A young British photographer living in South Africa and working for the magazine Drum, Berry was there to document the demonstration along with other members of the press. At first, nothing dramatic seemed to be happening. Then it did.

"The tension had been building up for weeks," Berry told BJP in an interview published on 30 May 1975. "Black Africans were striking for things like a decent living wage and the abolition of the need to carry passes [a form of internal passport used to segregate the population] – demands we would consider quite moderate. But striking by blacks in South Africa was illegal. The press had been drawn to Sharpeville because that morning an African had been killed."

A convoy of police armoured cars arrived, and photographers were ordered to disperse. Berry disobeyed. He parked his car behind a building, slipped unnoticed into the compound among the crowd, and began to take pictures.

"There was a sudden explosion of gunfire," he recalled. "People started running in all directions and I instinctively began to take more pictures. A woman racing in front of me was hit and as I saw more people fall, I dropped to the ground myself. There seemed little point in trying to get away because you were just as likely to get hit running. Perhaps a minute elapsed, the firing finally stopped, and I got up, and took more photographs of the people on the ground."

The South African police said they had killed 69 protesters and wounded 180, including children. Research published in 2023 shows at least 91 were killed and some 238 wounded. Many of the injured sustained back injuries from being shot as they tried to flee.

Berry's photographs were the only record of what had happened, other than the testimonies of the police and the township people. Drum's owner refused to publish them, fearing the magazine would be shut down. Berry sent them to an agency in London, where magazines including LIFE and Paris Match picked them up.

The images later served in court to exonerate protesters who had been shot at and then charged with affray. "The pictures… were socially important at the time because they were able to prove certain points at the ensuing court trial," Berry told BJP in 1975. "For instance, the police said they hadn't used rapid-fire arms and the pictures proved that they had."

Berry testified in person. "As the only non-police white guy to witness the people running away who were shot in the back, I was able to testify when they were charged with affray and it came to court," he said in an interview with Laura Havlin published by Magnum Photos in 2018. "I was called to give evidence and as a white in those days in South Africa my word was taken as gospel. I was believed over the police."

Berry faced no immediate repercussions and continued to document apartheid. Eventually, like many other members of the press, he was banned from the country with no reason given. The massacre felt like a turning point, but another ten years passed before things began to change in South Africa; Sharpeville is now marked with a public holiday.

The images retain their force. Just over a week before Berry's death, as The Guardian reported that three of those injured are suing the South African government for compensation – a move that could open the way for hundreds of others – Berry's photographs were published again.

For Berry, photographing Sharpeville was a watershed. There were no great pictures to be had, he told BJP editor Diane Smyth in 2020 for an article on WePresent, but the event showed him the importance of documentary photography. "People were just being shot and I photographed them being shot around me," he said.

Invited to join Magnum in 1962, Berry became a full member five years later and went on to become The Observer's first contract photographer. He worked worldwide, documenting conflict in Northern Ireland, Israel, Vietnam and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and famine in Ethiopia. When Paris Match chose not to include his images of British Army violence in a story on Northern Ireland, Berry resolved to take more control of the circulation of his work, and he published many books.

In 1978 he published The English, supported by the first Arts Council grant given to a photographer. His final book, Water, was published by GOST in 2023 after 15 years of work. "This year has shown above all others that the planet is struggling," he said at its launch. "There is too much water in some places, too little in others. Ice is melting at an unprecedented pace and it's so very easy to dismiss what is happening when we see it briefly on TV and then it's gone. I am concerned that our ecosystem is less than robust and if just a few people think of ways in which we can support it, I feel I can rest and let my work tell its tale."

Berry's career as a photojournalist covering social issues around the world belongs to a tradition now often critiqued. But his Sharpeville images testify to the power of documentary photography, and Berry defended that mission to the end. "When I joined Magnum, we regarded ourselves as having common social interests in what was going on in the world," he told Smyth. "We were all left – not Left with a capital L – but left-thinking in how we wanted to look at what was going on. We wanted to show people on one side of the world what was happening to people on the other side of the world… I'm frankly not interested in navel-gazing – I'm looking at what's there and trying to portray it in the best way I can."

With the Sharpeville compensation claims now before the courts, his photographs are set to keep doing that work.