Peter Magubane was born in Johannesburg and became attracted to photography after taking pictures with a Kodak Brownie as a schoolboy.
His first journalistic assignment as a field photographer was covering the 1955 ANC convention in Bloemfontein for Drum magazine.
Three years later he won Best Press Picture of the year, becoming the first black South African to win a national photographic prize.
In June 1969 he was arrested while photographing protesters outside Winnie Mandela’s jail cell. Charges against Magubane were
eventually dropped a year later, but the South African authorities banned him from taking any photographs for five years.