The acclaimed photo exhibition, Ernest Cole, Photographer by the Hasselblad Foundation in Gothenburg, Sweden will be held at the Red Location Museum, Port Elizabeth from 20 May to 14 July 2011.
First showcased at the Johannesburg Art Gallery, the exhibition then travelled to the Iziko South African National Gallery in Cape Town before packing up to head for the Red Location Museum, Port Elizabeth’s opening on 19 May. The next two venues are the Durban Art Gallery and Mamelodi, at the University of Pretoria’s Mamelodi Campus library.
Ernest Cole passionately believed in his mission to tell the world in photographs what it meant to be black under Apartheid rule. He identified intimately with his subjects, and in photographs of unsurpassed strength and gravitas, he penetrated to the very depths of the existence of black people as they negotiated their lives through the insanity of apartheid and its racist laws and oppression.
Born in Eersterust, Pretoria on 21 March 1940 as Ernest Levi Tsoloane Kole, Cole left school early and became an unskilled labourer. His break came when he was employed by a Chinese studio photographer as his assistant. Here he picked up the basics of photography and obtained an old Yashika twin lens reflex camera.
Whilst working as a floor sweeper and messenger at Zonk Magazine, Ernest Cole saved up enough money to put down a deposit on two Nikon rangefinder cameras and a few lenses.
In 1958 Cole applied for a job with Drum magazine. Jürgen Schadeberg, the chief photographer employed him as his assistant. Cole also started a correspondence course with the New York Institute of Photography. With their support, he decided on a project which entailed recording the evils and social effects of apartheid.
Work at the Bantu World newspaper (now The Sowetan) was followed freelance work for clients such as Drum, the Rand Daily Mail, The World and the Sunday Express in the 1960’s.
Seeking to leave South Africa, he became re-classified as a Coloured by changing his name from Kole to Cole. As a result, he was able to leave for New York in 1966. He took his apartheid project prints with him which he showed to Magnum Photos. This resulted in a publishing deal with the publishing rights owned by Random House. The book, House of Bondage, was banned in South Africa.
In the book, Cole writes: “Three-hundred years of white supremacy in South Africa has placed us in bondage, stripped us of our dignity, robbed us of our self-esteem and surrounded us with hate.”
Later he received a grant from the Ford Foundation for another book, ‘A study of the Negro family in the rural South and the Negro family in the urban ghetto’. This was never published although he did take a number of photographs.
Cole then moved to Sweden where he took up film making. The apartheid photos he had taken were used extensively by the ANC in their various publications.
He died of cancer in New York in 1990.
(Editors Notes: I cannot get exact clarity on the date of death as Wikipedia indicates two dates; 19 February and 18 February. My other source, SA History online is lank confused saying that Ernest Cole’s date of death is 17 December 1990 BUT further down on the page states; “In January 1990, Ernest Cole was hospitalised with terminal cancer. On 15 February 1990, his mother left South Africa for the United States to visit him in hospital. He died 2 days later on Saturday 17 December 1990.” I reckon it is probably safe to assume that Ernest Cole died around 18 February 1990)
Ernest Cole’s Book available online at Kalahari: Ernest Cole – Photographer.
Alan Straton
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Nice article thanks for sharing. the photo is really good.
Nice article thanks for sharing. the photo is really good.