In 1993, Kendall Hunter travelled to Johannesburg, South Africa, as a volunteer photojournalist for the South African newspaper, New Nation. She immersed herself in the lives of the South African people and witnessed firsthand the country’s most monumental changes, including the demise of apartheid legislation and Nelson Mandela’s ascent to the presidency. As a photojournalist, her life was often at risk, but her photographs of this difficult and violent time were published internationally. She also made many friendships, and grew to love South Africa and its people. Black Taxi is Kendall Hunter’s personal account, in words and photographs, of her year spent working, living, and documenting South Africa’s journey to freedom.

Comments and reviews for Black Taxi:

It is an act of presumption to enter a country as an observer or witness and leave it some few months later convinced of your privileged spiritual allegiance with its inhabitants.  To her enormous credit Kendall Hunter, in her photo essay and accompanying text Black Taxi: Shooting South Africa, is always aware of her status as wayfarer in another, and at times devastating foreign place. “Those who know the country best are its people,” she reminds us in her afterward where she defines herself unequivocally as a Canadian in South Africa.

…I am not unfamiliar with the distance between “here” and “there”.  It is not, as is sometimes imagined, the shortest distance between two points, and so reading this book is a disturbing experience for me.  Every photograph is relentlessly significant because each contains both the potential to record historical change and to recall shocking violence.”
~ Meira Cook, Prairie Fire

“Kendall, it was a privilege to be on the same program with you. You remind us what journalism is supposed to be and also that journalists sometimes do have souls.”
~ Margaret Atwood, Wordfest 1996.

This is the very best kind of street reporting-exploring, experiencing, communicating with the camera. And always with equal measures of mind and heart. That it all happens deep within one of the most gripping historical sagas of the century makes Kendall Hunter’s book a must-read.
~ Arthur Kent