Ernest Cole: Lost and Found

What did the daily lives of (black) people who lived in South Africa under apartheid look like? In 1967, South African black photographer Ernest Levi Tsoloane Cole (1940-1990) answered this question with the publication of his photobook House of Bondage. Cole, a fierce opponent of apartheid, left for New York in 1966, where he brought his photographs to the attention of Magnum Photos, which eventually led to the book's publication. In South Africa itself, House of Bondage was banned. After his untimely death, it was long thought that all his negatives had been lost. However, in 2018, 60,000 unknown negatives of his were recovered in Stockholm, where he had also lived.

Haitian filmmaker Raoul Peck (I Am Not Your Negro) pays a fascinating tribute to Cole by showing not only how Cole had lived and abhorred apartheid, but also how he fared in his self-imposed exile in New York.