João Silva (photographer)

In 2011 Silva spoke at Bronx Documentary Center in New York about his life as photojournalist. His speech was published in The New York Times and the lens.blogs.nytimes.com. He told the audience: "I don't really use the term 'war photographer' in describing myself... But as a photojournalist, you have a lot more responsibilities than just being at war." He continued: "I'm a historian with a camera, and hopefully my pictures use the medium to capture history, or to tell a story, or to highlight somebody else's suffering. That's ultimately why I continue doing it, and why I want to continue doing it."

Silva was treated at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, after The New York Times insisted that he get the best medical attention. After more than eighty operations and rehabilitation training, he was working again as photographer. In between, he took part in a marathon, a year after he stepped on the landmine. He took part in the New York City Marathon on a hand-cranked bike finishing it in 2 hours 38 minutes. In December 2011, he returned home in Johannesburg, South Africa, as a staff member of The New York Times.

In October 2010, Silva stepped on a land mine while on patrol with US soldiers in Kandahar, Afghanistan and lost his left leg below the knee, and his right leg from just above it. After recovery and receiving two prostheses, his first assignment out of Walter Reed Army Medical Center for The New York Times was at the White House. He now works as staff photographer for The New York Times in Africa.

On 23 October 2010, Silva stepped on a land mine while on patrol with US soldiers in Kandahar, Afghanistan and lost his left leg below the knee, and his right leg from just above it.

In March 1993, Robert Hadley, information officer for the UN Operation Lifeline Sudan, invited Silva and Kevin Carter to come to Sudan and report on the 1993 famine in South Sudan. The two flew to Nairobi to get from there to Sudan. Increasing fighting in Sudan held them up in Nairobi, but Carter managed to fly with the UN for one day to Juba in the south Sudan to take photos of a barge, used as a route for food aid for the region. The UN then received permission from a rebel group to fly food aid to Ayod, and Robert Hadley invited Silva and Carter to accompany him on this trip.

Silva began working as freelancer for the Johannesburg Herald in 1990. Beside his jobs for the Alberton Record in 1991, taking pictures from car–crashes and Rotary meetings, he visited the conflict zones of Thokoza and Soweto. There, he shot his first pictures of the killings in the developing violence in the townships. Some weeks later he went with a portfolio of his best pictures to the Reuters office in Johannesburg and arranged to submit photos to them on-spec. He soon left the paper and worked full-time as a freelancer for Reuters. His next step was to go with a new portfolio to The Star, where Ken Oosterbroek saw the pictures. Silva then began to freelance for the Sunday Star and was later hired by Oosterbroek as a staff photographer.

Silva gave up his other jobs, bought a second-hand camera and studied black-and-white photography at a vocational night school. At the end of 1989, he moved to Johannesburg and established himself as photographer.

João Silva (born 9 August 1966) is a Portuguese-born South African war photographer. He is the last working member of the Bang-Bang Club, a group of photographers who covered South Africa from the time of Nelson Mandela's release from prison in 1990, to the country's first multiracial elections in 1994. He has worked in Africa, the Balkans, Central Asia, Russia, and the Middle East.