Last Friday, as the City of Gold soaked in a gentle rain, I slipped into The Bioscope Theatre, coffee in hand and popcorn at the ready, and became fully immersed in Ernest Cole: Lost and Found. This gripping documentary about the iconic photographer, narrated by LaKeith Stanfield (best known for Get Out and Judas and the Black Messiah), comes alive with a moody, New York jazz-inspired soundtrack that pulls you into the raw, vibrant and sometimes painful pulse of 1970s New York.
Ernest Cole was a South African photographer renowned for powerful images that captured the brutal realities of life under apartheid. A hugely significant figure in documentary photography, his work remains a poignant testament to the struggles of Black South Africans during that time.
Cole is best known for the harrowing House of Bondage, published in New York in 1967 when he was only 27 years old. The book offered an unflinching, stark look at what it meant to be Black in South Africa during apartheid. Rather than focusing on large-scale protests or well-known resistance figures, House of Bondage zeroed in on the everyday – segregation, inequality, poverty, suffering and resilience.
His raw and unsentimental images captured scenes like malnourished babies held by their mothers, children crammed into overheated classrooms, migrant workers stripped naked, and countless innocent Black South Africans arrested under pass laws. Cole’s photography was a deeply personal document of apartheid’s inner workings, so damning to the government that he had to smuggle it out of the country.
Unfortunately, many South Africans are unfamiliar with Cole and his work, largely because he spent much of his life in exile and his work was banned. An original copy of House of Bondage is hard to find here, and as a long-time admirer of his photography, I’m fortunate to own a copy – purchased in the US and shipped back home.
That said, you may recognise Cole’s work without even realising it. If you’ve visited the Apartheid Museum’s “Life Under Apartheid” section, you’ll have seen pages from the book enlarged and on display. When the museum opened its doors in 2001, it marked the first time Cole’s photographs were publicly shown in South Africa – 34 years after the book was published and 11 years after his death. Thankfully, a new edition of House of Bondage, featuring additional images and text, was released in 2022, introducing Cole’s work to a new generation.
A tribute to one of South Africa’s greats
Ernest Cole: Lost and Found is a much-needed tribute to the photographer and an important and engaging opportunity to learn about his life. It’s directed by Haitian filmmaker Raoul Peck, whose own family was forced into political exile – an experience he feels connects him to Cole. Peck also made the Oscar-nominated I Am Not Your Negro, based on an unfinished manuscript by civil rights activist James Baldwin.
Lost and Found premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in France, where it won the Golden Eye Award for best documentary, and was also showcased at the Joburg Film Festival.
The documentary uses first-person narration to tell Cole’s story, from his birth on the outskirts of Pretoria to his passion for photography and the creation of the images that would become House of Bondage. However, much of the film delves into a lesser-known part of Cole’s life: his exile in New York and, for shorter periods, Europe.
When he arrived in New York, he believed he had discovered a new world of liberty and equality, but after travelling to the southern and more rural areas of the US, he said: “In South Africa I was afraid of being arrested, in the United States I was afraid of being killed.”
This was only a few years after the assassinations of president John F Kennedy, Robert F Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr, and at a time when the Voting Rights Act, signed into law in 1965, had only recently granted Black Americans the right to vote.
Unable to return home, Cole, camera always at the ready, documented Black life in the US during the late 1960s and 1970s, thanks to a grant from the Ford Foundation. In 2023, Ernest Cole: The True America was published.
This treasure trove of images, once thought lost, offers a vital window into American society. Cole photographed New York City and Harlem, including a surprising series of colour images featured in the documentary. These lesser-known works, along with his striking shots of the seedy, neon-lit Times Square of the 1970s, were a major highlight of the film for me, capturing vibrant communities, the fashion of the time, and showcasing his exceptional talent for street photography.
In 1968, he also travelled to Chicago, Cleveland, Memphis, Atlanta, Los Angeles and rural areas of the South, capturing diverse Black communities in the months surrounding the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. The photographs convey both the hope and freedom Cole experienced in the US, alongside the inequality and disillusionment he faced as he realised the racism he thought he had left behind in South Africa was still pervasive.
Lives in exile
The real focus of the film, and something we often overlook, is the profound impact of political exile and the trauma it caused for many, including Cole. The pain of leaving home, often without the possibility of ever returning, was an immense burden. For artists like Cole, Miriam Makeba, the Manhattan Brothers, Gerard Sekoto, Kippie Moeketsi and Dumile Feni – who was a close friend of Cole’s and tragically also passed away before he could return – the experience was one of complete isolation. Alone in a foreign land, surrounded by unfamiliar customs, cold weather and without the support of family and friends, they faced profound loneliness.
To this end, Lost and Found delves into Cole’s years in New York, exploring his mental struggles, and the alienation he felt from his homeland as he watched events like the 1976 student uprising unfold from afar. In the 1980s, he distanced himself from photography, battling depression and homelessness. Cole passed away in 1990, far from home, with his mother by his side – still separated from the land and people he had fought so hard to document and understand.
The title of the documentary, Ernest Cole: Lost and Found, carries multiple layers of meaning – referring not only to his exile but also to the recent rediscovery and appreciation of his work. More straightforward, though, is that for decades, it was believed that most of Cole’s negatives had been lost. However, as the documentary reveals, in 2017, Cole’s nephew, Leslie Matlaisane, was contacted by a Swedish bank about retrieving 60,000 negatives from three safety deposit boxes.
The bank had no information on who had stored them, but Matlaisane agreed to take them. Among these were unseen images from South Africa before Cole’s exile, as well as his later work in the US. These finds, alongside Cole’s notes, offer a rare chance to uncover more about his life and his estrangement from photography, and to gain a deeper appreciation of his exceptional body of work. While much remains mysterious about these images, at least they are finally back on home soil.
The documentary isn’t flawless (just imagine if it had been crafted by a South African director and crew, and narrated in a local voice), but it’s nonetheless a compelling piece, and we should be grateful that Peck recognised the significance of Cole’s story. Ernest Cole: Lost and Found is a must-watch for South Africans, offering an opportunity to rediscover the photographer’s life and exceptional work. It also serves as a poignant reminder to honour Cole, and the many other artists and musicians exiled far from home – many of whom never returned.
The Bioscope at Joburg’s 44 Stanley Avenue will be hosting limited screenings of the documentary. For more details, visit: www.thebioscope.co.za.
Some useful links if you want to know more
- ‘Ernest Cole: Lost and Found’ documentary trailer
- Aperture PhotoBook Club discussion on the republishing of ‘House of Bondage’
- An interview with ‘Ernest Cole: Lost and Found’ director Raoul Peck
- ‘Ernest Cole’ documentary (2006), where fellow photographer and friend Jürgen Schadeberg tells Cole’s story
- For details on ‘House of Bondage’ and ‘The True America’, visit aperture.org. (Both books are available online and at select bookshops in South Africa)
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