The Office of Cultural Activities of the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV) will inaugurate  the exhibition “Jürgen Schadeberg: personal file. Sixty-five years documenting daily life” on Thursday, September 25, 2014, at 8 pm, in the exhibition hall of the Rectorate building (3A).

The exhibition (free admission) includes the photographer’s personal selection. He has recently been awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the UPV. In words of Schadeberg himself, through the 82 pieces that comprise the exhibition, he wants to “highlight the daily life of the people that appear in them. My aim is to document daily life, as for me it is absorbing and extraordinary”.

Jürgen Schadeberg was born in Berlin in 1931 and, while still in his teens, worked as an apprentice photographer for a press agency. In 1950, he emigrated to South Africa.  A year later, he took his first photograph of Nelson Mandela who, then, inaugurated the only black law firm of the country.

Throughout the years, the German photographer had the chance to take photographs of the South African leader on many other occasions:  the strikes against apartheid, the trial in which he was sentenced to life imprisonment, while in prison, during his release and during his election as president of the country.

His most famous picture is the portrait of Mandela at his cell window but for decades Schadeberg has used his Leica to capture the social, political and cultural reality of the country. He photographed the main figures of South Africa, such as  Moroka, Walter Sisulu, Yusuf Dadoo and; Huddleston, as well as personalities in the jazz and literary world including: Dolly Rathebe in Sophiatown, Miriam Makeba, Hugh Masekela and Kippie Moeketsi.

“Due to the political pressure and the harassment he received”, Schadeberg was compelled to abandon South Africa in 1964, although he came back 20 years later in order to show “the changes that the progressive end of apartheid was bringing to the country” through his photographs.

The exhibition also includes the construction of the Berlin Wall, experienced in situ by the German photographer, as well as his view of Spain in the final years of the Franco regime, France, the contrast in Great Britain and life in his native Germany.

The exhibition will be open until December 16 and can be visited from Monday to Friday (except holidays), between 11 am and 2 pm, and between 5 and 8 pm.