Ernest Cole in the House of Bondage

Ernest Cole, born in South Africa in 1940, is one of the first black photographers to have documented Apartheid in photographs - and this in staggeringly intense images. Fleeing into US exile in 1966, he brought out the book The House of Bondage the following year. Dealing with the situation of black people in South Africa, this stirring book, which was banned on publication in Cole's own country, is today a rare bibliophile item. Cole continued his photographic research into racism in the US by documenting the situation of Afro-Americans in Harlem and the Southern states. The high quality of these photographs matches the South African pictures yet they have never come to be published in book form as planned. The neglect has now been remedied. Cole died in New York in 1990.