Ernest Cole: The True America

About

Ernest Cole (born in Transvaal South Africa 1940; died in New York 1990) is best known for House of Bondage a photobook published in 1967 that chronicles the horrors of apartheid. After fleeing South Africa in 1966 he became a banned person settling in New York. He was associated with Magnum Photos and received funding from the Ford Foundation to undertake a project looking at Black communities and cultures in the United States. Cole spent an extensive time in Sweden and became involved with the Tiofoto collective. He died at age forty-nine of cancer. In 2017 more than six thousand of Coles negativesmissing for more than forty yearsresurfaced in Sweden. James Sanders is a journalist researcher and scholar. He has written extensively on South African politics in such books as South Africa and the International Media 19721979: A Struggle for Representation (1999) and Apartheids Friends: The Rise and Fall of South Africas Secret Service (2006). He worked as a research specialist on Anthony Sampson Mandela: The Authorised Biography (1999) and on numerous documentary films including Mandela: The Living Legend (2003) and Mandelas Gun (2016). He served as a guest editor of Noseweek and was the founding editor of Molotov Cocktail. Sanders has concentrated his research on the life of Ernest Cole. Leslie M. Wilson is associate director for academic engagement and research at the Art Institute of Chicago. Her research teaching and curatorial endeavors focus on the history of photography the arts of Africa and the African diaspora modern and contemporary American art and museum studies. Her current and forthcoming projects include not all realisms: photography Africa and the long 1960s at the University of Chicagos Smart Museum of Art where she was a curatorial fellow from 2019 to 2021 and David Goldblatt: No ulterior motive at the Art Institute of Chicago with cocurators Matthew Witkovsky and Judy Ditner. She has written for numerous publications including Dear Dave FOAM and Manual. From 2017 to 2021 she was assistant professor of art history at Purchase College SUNY.