Ernest Cole
Encyclopedia
Overview
Ernest Cole was a black South African born in Eersterust in PretoriaPretoria
Pretoria is a city located in the northern part of Gauteng Province, South Africa. It is one of the country's three capital cities, serving as the executive and de facto national capital; the others are Cape Town, the legislative capital, and Bloemfontein, the judicial capital.Pretoria is...
, in 1940.
He left school when the Bantu Education Act was put in place, and instead completed his matric via correspondance. He started taking photographs at a very young age, and was given a camera by a Roman Catholic Priest in the 1950s, with which he broadened his portfolio.
In 1958 Cole applied for a job with Drum magazine. Jürgen Schadeberg
Jürgen Schadeberg
-Overview:Jürgen Schadeberg was born in Berlin in 1931. In 1950, he moved to South Africa to rejoin his family and joined Drum magazine as official photographer and layout artist....
, the chief photographer employed him as his assistant. Cole also started a correspondence course with the New York Institute of Photography
New York Institute of Photography
The New York Institute of Photography is a for-profit distance education school based out of New York City, offering different courses in photography to students all over the world...
. With their support, he decided on a project which entailed recording the evils and social effects of apartheid.
He then worked at the Bantu World newspaper (later renamed The World
The World (South African newspaper)
The World, originally named The Bantu World, was the Johannesburg black daily newspaper which published photographer Sam Nzima's iconic image of Hector Pieterson, taken during the Soweto uprisings of June 16, 1976.- History:...
- now The Sowetan
The Sowetan
The Sowetan is an English language, South African newspaper that started in 1981 as a liberation struggle newspaper and was freely distributed to households in the black township of Soweto, Johannesburg, Gauteng Province....
) where he continued his career as a photographer. In the early 1960s, he started to freelance for clients such as Drum, the Rand Daily Mail, The World and the Sunday Express. This made him South Africa’s first black freelance photographer.
Seeking to leave South Africa, he became re-classified as a Coloured
Coloured
In the South African, Namibian, Zambian, Botswana and Zimbabwean context, the term Coloured refers to an heterogenous ethnic group who possess ancestry from Europe, various Khoisan and Bantu tribes of Southern Africa, West Africa, Indonesia, Madagascar, Malaya, India, Mozambique,...
. As a result, he was able to leave for New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
in 1966. He took his apartheid project prints with him. These he showed to Magnum Photos
Magnum Photos
Magnum Photos is an international photographic cooperative owned by its photographer-members, with offices located in New York, Paris, London and Tokyo...
. This resulted in a publishing deal with the publishing rights owned by Random House
Random House
Random House, Inc. is the largest general-interest trade book publisher in the world. It has been owned since 1998 by the German private media corporation Bertelsmann and has become the umbrella brand for Bertelsmann book publishing. Random House also has a movie production arm, Random House Films,...
. 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
Ford Foundation
The Ford Foundation is a private foundation incorporated in Michigan and based in New York City created to fund programs that were chartered in 1936 by Edsel Ford and Henry Ford....
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
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
where he took up film making. The apartheid photos he had taken were used extensively by the ANC
African National Congress
The African National Congress is South Africa's governing Africanist political party, supported by its tripartite alliance with the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the South African Communist Party , since the establishment of non-racial democracy in April 1994. It defines itself as a...
in their various publications.
He died of cancer in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
on February 18, 1990.
Books
- House of Bondage, Random House, 1967, ISBN 0-394-42935-4
- Defiant Images: Photography and Apartheid South Africa, Darren Newbury, University of South Africa (UNISA) Press, 2009, ISBN 978-1-86888-523-7 (see Chapter 4. An 'unalterable blackness': Ernest Cole's House of Bondage)
- The Photographer, Ernest Cole, Steidl, 2010, ISBN 978-3869301372
Documentaries
- 2006 - Ernest Cole – Video - 52 min
"This is the story of the first black photojournalist to challenge South Africa’s apartheid system. Risking imprisonment, Ernest Cole dedicated his life to showing the world the injustices and exploitation of segregation. But he paid a heavy price for his work and ended up dying in exile." Journeyman Pictures
Selected group exhibitions
- Photo-journalism exhibition at the Victoria and Albert MuseumVictoria and Albert MuseumThe Victoria and Albert Museum , set in the Brompton district of The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, England, is the world's largest museum of decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 4.5 million objects...
, London
- Life Under Apartheid at the Apartheid MuseumApartheid MuseumThe Apartheid Museum is a museum complex in Johannesburg, South Africa dedicated to illustrating apartheid and the 20th century history of South Africa. The structure pictured here is owned by Gold Reef - the Casino Company.- History :...
, Johannesburg
- eye Africa (1960 to 1998) at the CastleCastle of Good HopeThe Castle of Good Hope is a star fort which was built on the original coastline of Table Bay and now, because of land reclamation, lies nearer to the Cape Town city centre in South Africa.-History:...
's William Fehr Collection, Cape Town
- Colour this Whites Only at the TateTate-Places:*Tate, Georgia, a town in the United States*Tate County, Mississippi, a county in the United States*Táté, the Hungarian name for Totoi village, Sântimbru Commune, Alba County, Romania*Tate, Filipino word for States...
Museum in London
- 2001 - Soweto – A South African Myth - Photographs from the 1950s (by Alf KhumaloAlf KhumaloAlfred Kumalo is a South African photographer.-Overview:Alf Kumalo was born in Alexandra near Johannesburg. He first worked in a garage doing various jobs and then started freelancing for various publications, selling his photographs where he could...
, Ernest Cole and Jürgen SchadebergJürgen Schadeberg-Overview:Jürgen Schadeberg was born in Berlin in 1931. In 1950, he moved to South Africa to rejoin his family and joined Drum magazine as official photographer and layout artist....
). The core of the exhibition is the student uprising of 1976. This includes some of Peter MagubanePeter Magubane-Early life:He was born in Vrededorp, now Pageview, a suburb in Johannesburg and grew up in Sophiatown. He started taking some photographs using a Kodak Brownie box camera as a schoolboy....
's work.
- 2010 - Ernest Cole: Photographer - Although not the first, this is the largest retrospective of his work displayed in Johannesburg at the Johannesburg Art Galery. The exhibition is a homecoming of sorts for Cole's legacy, as many of his photographs were previously banned in apartheid South Africa.