Ernest Cole

The True America

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$65.00
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Description

The first publication of Ernest Cole’s photographs depicting Black lives in the United States during the turbulent and eventful late 1960s and early 1970s. After the publication of his landmark 1967 book House of Bondage on the horrors of apartheid, Ernest Cole moved to New York and received a grant from the Ford Foundation to document Black communities in cities and rural areas of the United States. He released very few images from this body of work while he was alive. Thought to be lost entirely, the negatives of Cole’s American pictures resurfaced in Sweden in 2017. Ernest Cole photographed extensively in New York City, documenting the lively community of Harlem, including a thrilling series of color photographs, as he turned his talent to street photography across Manhattan. In 1968 Cole traveled to Chicago, Cleveland, Memphis, Atlanta, and Los Angeles, as well as rural areas of the South, capturing the mood of different Black communities in the months leading up to and just after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. The pictures both reflect a newfound hope and freedom that Cole felt in America, and an incisive eye for inequality as he became increasingly disillusioned by the systemic racism he witnessed. This treasure trove of rediscovered work provides an important window into American society and redefines Cole’s oeuvre, presenting a fuller picture of the life and work of a man who fled South Africa and exposed life under apartheid to the world.

Specification

First Edition
Publisher: Aperture
Publication Year: 2024
Format: Hardback
Pages: 304, 275 images
Size: 8.4 x 11.5 inches (213 x 292 mm)

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Ernest Cole

Ernest Cole was born in South Africa’s Transvaal in 1940 and died in New York City in 1990. During his life he was known for only one book: House of Bondage – published in 1967. In 2011, the Hasselblad Foundation produced a follow-up: Ernest Cole: Photographer.

Cole’s early work chronicled the horrors of apartheid for Drum magazine and the New York Times among numerous other publications, and in 1966, he fled the Republic of South Africa. In 1968, the apartheid regime banned him in perpetuity, stripping him of his South African passport. He was briefly associated with Magnum Photos and received funding from the Ford Foundation and Time-Life. In North America, he concentrated on street photography in primarily urban settings.

Between 1969 and 1971, Cole spent an extensive amount of time on regular visits to Sweden where he became involved with the Tiofoto collective and exhibited his work. From 1972, Cole’s life fell into disarray and he ceased to work as a photographer, losing control of his archive and negatives. Having experienced periods of homelessness, Cole died aged 49 of pancreatic cancer in 1990. In 2017, more than 60,000 of Cole’s negatives missing for more than 40 years were discovered in a Stockholm bank vault. This work is now being examined and cataloged.

In 2022, House of Bondage was re-released by Aperture with an additional chapter, and for the first time, Cole’s photographs depicting Black lives in the United States during the late 1960s and early 1970s was published in 2024’s The True America.

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