PREVIEW: Man behind infamous photo remembered

The photographer behind one of the most published pictures in South Africa, that of paedophile Gert van Rooyen and his girlfriend, Joey Haarhoff, was last week laid to rest.

August 30, 2018

De Wet Potgieter Less than a minute

MBOMBELA – Gordon Harris – fondly known as “Flash Gordon” – retired to the quiet surroundings of Kaapsehoop with his wife, Sonja, in 2010 where they lived a reclusive life.
Soon after Van Rooyen and Haarhoff were cornered in a high-speed chase by the police in Pretoria and both died a violent death in January 1990, Gordon became famous overnight with his portrait photographs of the two fiends.

When Gordon read in the newspapers about Van Rooyen and Haarhoff’s deaths, he remembered the names and discovered in his files a series of family photos he had taken in the late 1980s of the couple and siblings.