Ernest Cole

For other people named Ernest Cole, see Ernest Cole (disambiguation).

Ernest Cole (1940 - 19 February 1990) was a South African photographer. In the early 1960s, he started to freelance for clients such as Drum magazine, the Rand Daily Mail, Drum and the Sunday Express. This made him South Africa’s first black freelance photographer.[1][2]

Overview

Cole was a black South African, born in Eersterust in Pretoria, in 1940. He left school when the Bantu Education Act was put into place in 1953, and instead completed his diploma via correspondence. He started taking photographs at a very young age, and in the 1950s was given a camera by a Roman Catholic priest, with which Cole broadened his portfolio. As he himself put it: "I quit school in 1957 rather than go along with the 'bantu' education for servitude which had become more strict than before."[3]

In 1958, he applied for a job with Drum magazine. Jürgen Schadeberg, the picture editor, employed him as his assistant.[4] Cole also started a correspondence course with the New York Institute of Photography.

While working for Drum, Cole began to mingle with other talented young black South Africans—journalists, photographers, jazz musicians, and political leaders in the burgeoning anti-apartheid movement—and became radicalized in his political views. He soon decided on a project that entailed recording the evils and daily social effects of apartheid.

He then worked at the Bantu World newspaper (later renamed The World - now The Sowetan), where he continued his career as a photographer.

Seeking to leave South Africa, he became re-classified as a "Coloured." As a result, he was able to leave for New York City in 1966. He secretly took his apartheid project prints with him.[5] He showed his work to Magnum Photos and this resulted in a publishing deal with publishing rights owned by Random House. The resulting book, House of Bondage (1967), 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."[6]

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.[1]

Cole later moved to Sweden, where he took up filmmaking. The apartheid photos he had taken were used extensively by the ANC in their various publications.

Cole died of cancer in New York City on 18 February 1990 at the age of 49.[7]

Ernest Cole Award

The annual Ernest Cole Award was initiated in 2011 under the auspices of the University of Cape Town.[8][9]

Books

Documentaries

Selected group exhibitions

References

  1. 1 2 "Ernest Cole". SA History. Archived from the original on 2007-10-20. Retrieved 2007-12-02.
  2. Sean O'Hagan, Review of Ernest Cole: Photographer by Gunilla Knape, Struan Robertson, The Observer, 23 January 2011.
  3. Ernest Cole, "My Country, My Hell!", Ebony, February 1968, p. 68.
  4. Carole Naggar, "Ernest Cole, photographer of apartheid", Al Jazeera America, 2 September 2014.
  5. Dudley Randall, Review of House of Bondage, Negro Digest, February 1968, p. 94.
  6. Ernest Cole (1967). House of Bondage. New York: Random House. ISBN 0-394-42935-4.
  7. "Ernest Cole Dies at 49; Recorder of Apartheid". New York Times. 19 February 1990. Retrieved 2010-11-18. Ernest Cole, a South African photographer who published a pioneering collection of photographs documenting life under apartheid, died of cancer yesterday at New York Hospital in Manhattan. He was 49 years old....
  8. "The Ernest Cole Annual Photography Award", Africultures, March 2011.
  9. "About the award", Ernest Cole Award website.
  10. Documentaries: South Africa – Ernest Cole, Journeyman Pictures.
  11. "Ernest Cole Documentary" (review), Johannesburg City Bytes.
  12. "Photographers in This Display". Victoria & Albert Museum. Retrieved 2007-05-01.
  13. "Exhibitions". Apartheid Museum. Retrieved 2007-05-01.
  14. "African Photography 1840-1998". The Castle. Retrieved 2007-05-01.
  15. "Colour this Whites Only". Tate Britain. Retrieved 2007-05-01.
  16. Dugger, Celia W. (2010-11-17). "Ernest Cole: Photographer". The New York Times. Retrieved 2010-11-18.
  17. "Everything Was Moving: Photography from the 60s and 70s". The Barbican Centre. Retrieved 2012-11-04.

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 11/6/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.