On New Year’s Day in 1962 a bright-eyed 19-year-old began work as a photographer at Die Vaderland newspaper in Joburg. Last month Wessel Oosthuizen capped his professional lens one last time after 62 years of capturing photographs around the globe.
In that time, he recalls, the changing technology of photography flashed by almost at shutter speed.
“My first camera was a Speed Graphic 4x5. You used a cassette and could take only one picture at a time,” says Oosthuizen, 81.
Flash bulbs were mini-globes covered in plastic. If you removed the cover before shooting, the bulb, instead of just popping, would explode with a bang. It was a trick often played on colleagues, and it happened to Oosthuizen as he prepared to photograph a parliamentarian. “The flash exploded and he yelled: ‘Moenie skiet nie! [Don’t shoot!].’”
Cameras became lighter and Oosthuizen acquired a 35mm Pentax, but processing the film remained hard work.
“You had to warm your developer and fixing liquid to the same temperature or else the films would be grainy. Then you had to place the film in a drying cabinet and print the pictures. In winter this was particularly tough on the hands.
“And then digital cameras were introduced,” says Oosthuizen, who’d by then joined the Citizen, the first newspaper in South Africa to go fully digital. “And you got bylines: Picture by Wessel Oosthuizen/Nikon Digital!”
His most impressive subject was Russian cosmonaut Vasily Tsibliyev, whom he photographed in 2020
As for his subjects, Oosthuizen says the most impressive was Russian cosmonaut Vasily Tsibliyev, whom he photographed in 2020. He presented Tsibliyev with a bottle of Amarula liqueur, telling him that half of it would propel a rocket to the moon. “His reply was that the whole bottle would probably get him to Mars.”
His most irritating subject? “Sarah Brightman [the English soprano].” At the Westcliff Hotel in Joburg, she sat in front of a plant and Oosthuizen asked her to move — “she had a leaf ‘growing’ out of’ her head and hair. Her answer? ‘No!’ End of story — bad picture.”
Though an all-rounder, Oosthuizen is known for his sports pictures, especially of rugby players. It was fitting that he ended his career at his favourite venue, Ellis Park, shooting rugby pictures.
His most treasured sports picture is not one of his iconic rugby shots, but one of his daughter Heidi-Marie, who became South Africa’s first African champion in gymnastics in 1994, in an era when national team members like her could still call themselves Springboks.
Oosthuizen’s most poignant picture was one of great personal pain. “That was of my 10-month-old son Theunis in Joburg General Hospital, where he waited in vain for a liver transplant.”
Oosthuizen has always been held in high regard by his contemporaries — and his rivals. Tertius Pickard, who was one of the original members of the groundbreaking Touchline Media agency back in the 1990s and is now working in Australia, says: “We called him Oom Wally. I started at Beeld in 1984. He was chief photographer and a great leader, and inspired me to take better photos. He captured history during his career.”
To say Oosthuizen is well travelled is putting it mildly. “I’ve lost count but I think it’s between 60 and 65 countries. My favourites are still Russia, Ukraine and Serbia. I’ve been to Russia 21 times.”
A passion that still drives Oosthuizen is compiling books of his photographs. He pauses to think exactly how many. “I think about 34 so far.”
Looking back at his long career, does he have any advice for youngsters wanting to follow in his footsteps? The answer is stark: “For a long time now, I’ve been telling photographers to start writing. There are very few newspapers left these days, and maybe one staff photographer per newspaper. Besides, reporters now all take their own pictures with their cellphones.”
Technology may have made anyone with a cellphone a photographer, but can it provide Oosthuizen’s eye for composition? Or his hand speed? His eye caught the great Frik du Preez tackling All Black Chris Laidlaw in 1970 at Loftus, and he needed a split second to respond, to focus, to click the shutter — all in the flash of an old Speed Graphic bulb. Oosthuizen had those qualities — the human reaction that camera technology can’t match.
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