“The Unseen Struggles: Ernest Cole’s Lens on Apartheid’s Human Cost”

Published on: 05/01/2025 – 11:28Updated: 05/01/2025 – 11:36

2 min

“I recall the initial images. It was quite a while ago in Berlin during my studies,” Haitian filmmaker Raoul Peck conveyed to RFI.

“The anti-apartheid movement was commencing, and Ernest Cole’s visuals were widely circulated, as it was the first instance we uncovered the atrocities of apartheid from a human viewpoint, through the eyes of men and women.”

Brought into the world in 1940, Cole escaped South Africa in 1966 to flee the apartheid system. He resided in exile within the United States, where he documented vibrant moments of life in New York City and the southern United States.

His landmark work, House of Bondage – prohibited in South Africa – unveiled the harsh facts of apartheid and garnered Cole global recognition at the young age of 27.

“He was recognized as a black photographer, while his desire was to be a photographer akin to one of his icons, Cartier-Bresson,” Peck elucidates.

“Ernest Cole’s aspiration was, as he articulates, to capture ‘the human condition’.”

Peck’s movie also narrates the tale of Cole’s wandering after his exile in 1966.

“He is a man filled with rage, yet he is also a person, akin to numerous individuals I’ve encountered in exile, who are troubled, torn, and shattered by their separation from their homeland, often enduring great pain. Thus, he exists in isolation within this society,” Peck states.

The later years of Cole were characterized by struggle and obscurity, however, an unexpected development occurred in 2017 when 60,000 of his negatives and photographs were found in a Stockholm bank.

This collection, encompassing thousands of images taken in the US, had long been presumed lost. The enigma of who left the photos is yet to be resolved.

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Ernest Cole: Lost and Found premiered in France on 25 December, 2024.