This South African exile was one of the first to reveal to the world the reality and hell of apartheid. A moving photographic book and documentary by Raoul Peck shed light on the combative and chaotic life of photographer Ernest Cole.
In I Am Not Your Negro, Raoul Peck exalted the work of African-American writer James Baldwin on social and political struggles in the USA in the 1960s. This time, with Ernest Cole, photographe, the Haitian filmmaker gives new life and power to the images of one of those who spoke out against apartheid in South Africa. In 2017, over 60,000 of his negatives and photos were mysteriously discovered in the vaults of a Stockholm bank. This is what Raoul Peck reveals in this beautiful photographic work, published in October, taken directly from his documentary, released two months later in cinemas. Told in the first person, the images and words of Ernest Cole (1940-1990) finally emerge from the shadows, providing precious testimony to the horrors of South Africa's segregationist regime.
FROM AFRICA TO AMERICA
Ernest Cole, born Ernest Levi Tsoloane Kole in a Transvaal township, discovered Henri Cartier-Bresson's Moscow and chose his own way of documenting daily life in his homeland. An inhuman existence of institutionalized racial discrimination, which he immortalized in shots often taken in constrained conditions, while hidden or on the move.
A revolutionary book resulted ten years later, House of Bondage (1967), which was immediately censored and forced him into exile in 1966. He found a way to escape the Republic of South Africa and settled in cosmopolitan New York. In 1968, the apartheid regime forbade him to return, condemned him to exile and stripped him of his South African passport.
Thanks to these substantial archives in black & white and color, Raoul Peck retraces and reconstructs the journey of Ernest Cole, a man steeped in contradictions. Arriving in America, his new land of freedom, where he thought he'd put an end to segregation, he was confronted with the ignominy of the Southern states and the struggle for civil rights.
" When I photographed in South Africa, every day I was afraid of being arrested. In the American South, I was afraid of being killed ", he confesses throughout the pages.
INHUMANITY REPEATED THROUGH IMAGES
In a journey littered with traumas and hindrances, Ernest Cole nevertheless managed to win a Ford Foundation grant, collaborate with Magnum Photos and publish his work in magazines such as Drum and the New York Times.
Stern magazine also ended up publishing his photos, after rejecting them for the first time, when South African Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd, who defined apartheid as "a system of good neighborliness", was assassinated. Throughout his wanderings, Ernest Cole was never able to adapt to his new life, struggling with the same struggles. " I'm homesick and can't go back," he writes.
In the late 1970s, his mental and physical health declined. He stopped working as a photographer, sank into poverty and lived as a homeless man. He died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 49, a week after Nelson Mandela's release from prison in 1990. Three years later, Mandela was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and became the first black president of the rainbow nation the following year.
Whether in Africa, Sweden or America, segregation never ceased to pursue Ernest Cole. With this book and documentary, Raoul Peck makes reparation. He does justice to the man who, like so many others, had the courage to stand up against apartheid, offering a profound analysis of the notions and torments of exile based on work of inestimable value.
ERNEST COLE, PHOTOGRAPHE
BY ERNEST COLE AND RAOUL PECK
ÉDITIONS DENOËL, OCTOBER 2024
VELVET FILM OCTOBER 2024
DENOEL.FR
