Ernest Cole (born in Transvaal, South Africa, 1940 ; died in New York, 1990) is best known for House of Bondage, a photobook published in 1967 that chronicles the horrors of apartheid. After fleeing South Africa in 1966, he became a "banned person," settling in New York. He was associated with Magnum Photos and received funding from the Ford Foundation to undertake a project looking at Black communities and cultures in the United States.
Cole spent an extensive time in Sweden and became involved with the Tiofoto collective. He died at age forty-nine of cancer. In 2017, more than sixty thousand of his negatives - missing for mdre than forty years - resurfaced in Sweden. In 2022, House of Bondage was reissued by Aperture. Raoul Peck (preface) is an award-winning director whose documentaries, feature films, and television series touch upon colonialism, racism, and social inequalities.
He is currently working on a documentary about Ernest Cole. Leslie M. Wilson (essay) is associate director for academic engagement and research at the Art Institute of Chicago. James Sanders (essay) is a journalist and scholar specializing in South African history and politics. The images in this book were taken between late 1967 and early 1972. They were neither dated nor titled by Cole, and were selected from over forty thousand negatives of North American material found in Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken, Stockholm, and returned to the Ernest Cole Family Trust in 2017.
The chapter titles are drawn from Cole's letters or from text featured in the pictures.
Cole spent an extensive time in Sweden and became involved with the Tiofoto collective. He died at age forty-nine of cancer. In 2017, more than sixty thousand of his negatives - missing for mdre than forty years - resurfaced in Sweden. In 2022, House of Bondage was reissued by Aperture. Raoul Peck (preface) is an award-winning director whose documentaries, feature films, and television series touch upon colonialism, racism, and social inequalities.
He is currently working on a documentary about Ernest Cole. Leslie M. Wilson (essay) is associate director for academic engagement and research at the Art Institute of Chicago. James Sanders (essay) is a journalist and scholar specializing in South African history and politics. The images in this book were taken between late 1967 and early 1972. They were neither dated nor titled by Cole, and were selected from over forty thousand negatives of North American material found in Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken, Stockholm, and returned to the Ernest Cole Family Trust in 2017.
The chapter titles are drawn from Cole's letters or from text featured in the pictures.
