Narrative images: The Babysitter

"A young black girl, scarcely more than a child herself, looks after a baby girl for a white family. 1969." (literally via)

"In the post-war period, the South African government gradually developed a policy that was meant to permanently retain the rights and privileges of a white minority: apartheid, racial prejudices and tensions create difficulties in many societies, but only in South Africa was segregation institutionalized and regulated. The results were tragic and disturbing.
The camera of Ian Berry has uniquely recorded this aspect of the South African experience: the duty to ‘live apart’ while occupying the same space."
Magnum Photos

The photograph was taken by British photojournalist Ian Berry in South Africa where he worked for the Daily Mail and Drum magazine (via). Berry is the photographer who took "the photos that changed history". He was the only photographer to witness the Sharpeville massacre in 1960, an event that is now marked as a national holiday, one of the more brutal events in late-apartheid history with 69 people killed and 180 injured (via and via).

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photograph via Magnum Photos