John Wessels was born in Johannesburg in 1987. He started his photojournalism career in 2014. He is currently based in Dakar, Senegal, and is the chief photographer in West Africa for Agency France Press (AFP).
In 2015, he completed the Photojournalism and Documentary Course at the Market Photo Workshop in Johannesburg and in 2016 started freelancing for AFP and other media in Southern Africa.
From 2017 - 2019, he was based in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, where he was freelancing for AFP and several media outlets, NGOs and UN organizations.
In 2018 he was invited to exhibit his work from the DRC called Trapped In The DRC at Visa Pour l’image.
