Andrzej Sawa

Andrzej Sawa
Born	Andrzej Sawa 1941 Poland
Nationality	Polish South African
Known for	Photography

Andrzej Sawa (born 1941) is a Polish-South African photographer.

Sawa was born in Poland and was taken to a German labour camp in 1943 and lived there with his mother and grandmother until the end of the Second World War in 1945. Both Sawa's paternal and maternal grandfathers were Roman Catholics and perished in Auschwitz concentration camp.

He admits that his love for photography began when The Family of Man photographic exhibition came to Poland in 1956, coinciding with the time he was given his first camera, by his grandmother.

Sawa obtained an engineering degree in Poland but later began freelancing for newspapers and shot stills for the local television broadcaster before joining the broadcaster as a cameraman, although in his heart he remained a photographer.

In 1970, Sawa emigrated to South Africa, working in electronics at STC. While there he freelanced as a photographer for South Africa's Sunday Times newspaper.

He later took on a two-year freelance photographer position at the Johannesburg Sunday Times covering sports events. At the end of the tenure, he was given a full-time position at the newspaper. From the early-mid 1970s he was assigned to the Sunday Times Colour Magazine but was moved to the main newspaper when the magazine was closed. He continued photographing features for the newspaper, covering the Miss South Africa beauty pageant between 1974 and 1983. Between 1981 and 1992 he published photographs for the relaunched Sunday Times Colour Magazine.

Between the late 1970s and the late 1980s he worked alongside the newspaper's most popular columnist Jani Allan. As the paper's chief photographer, he photographed her celebrity interviewees such as Sol Kerzner, Vladimir Tretchikoff, Taubie Kushlick and Pieter-Dirk Uys. His photographs were later compiled in Face Value, a book of interview columns Allan published.

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