Biography
South African, 1978
James is an independent photojournalist and visual journalism specialist, currently based in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Recently, he worked as a senior visuals producer at Reuters, where he managed a diverse group of visual journalists across Africa, coordinating coverage, commissioning assignments and shaping Reuters’ visual strategy on the continent. Together, the team captured some of the region’s most significant political, economic and cultural moments.
He graduated from Rhodes University with a Bachelor of Journalism degree in 2000. His photographic work has predominantly revolved around themes of social inequality and people affected by conflict.
He was the former Chief Photographer and Picture Editor of the Sunday Times newspaper (2015) before leaving to pursue a career as a freelancer.
Currently, he is a member of Panos Pictures.
On 18 April 2015, during a wave of xenophobic violence, he photographed the murder of a Mozambican migrant by South African men. The man’s name was Emmanuel Sithole and the images of his death sparked outrage and made international headlines. The South African army was deployed in response and mass demonstrations were held in several African countries.
In 2015 he was named the South African Journalist of the Year. In 2018 his Red Ants project won the prestigious Visa d’or Feature Award at the Visa Pour l’image Photojournalism Festival in Perpignan, France. His work has been received various international awards including multiple Pictures of the Year International (POYi) awards, most recently an “Award of Excellence” in the coveted Photography Book of the Year category, for [BR]OTHER, (Jacana, 2021).
He is co-author of The Battle of Bangui (Penguin Random House, 2021), a non-fiction book documenting one of the key events during the 2013 coup in the Central African Republic.
Formerly, he taught documentary photography at the Market Photo Workshop in Johannesburg.
For almost two years, countries across the world have imposed a host of restrictions on daily life to combat the spread of Covid-19, confining people to their homes and closing restaurants and bars.
Red Ant Security Relocation & Eviction Services, or the ‘Red Ants’ in short, is a private security company in Johannesburg, South Africa, whose employees have become notorious for using excessive force in conducting their operations.
In the dense forrest of North Kivu, a series of gruesome massacres in villages around the town of Beni have left hundreds of people dead and the local population petrified, wondering why UN peacekeepers and members of the national army (FARDC) stationed nearby seem unable or unwilling to protect the lives of innocent civilians.
In February 2002, Jonas Savimbi, leader of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) was shot dead in a gun battle with the Angolan Army.
