Ernest Cole

After repeated harassment and interrogation by the police for photographing pass arrests, Ernest Cole orchestrated his own racial reclassification – including a name change “Kole” to “Cole” – as a means of sidestepping the pass laws, which in turn qualified him for the passport that would allow him to leave South Africa. When he left with his negatives and a group of pilgrims on their way to Lourdes in 1966, Cole went into self-imposed exile until his death in 1990. Random House published House of Bondage in 1967 It became Cole’s only published work of photography and quickly emerged as a seminal work on life under apartheid in the 1960s, in spite of being immediately banned by the Apartheid government. The book is not so much an account of the ideological battleground of grand Apartheid as an exploration of the ways in which these ideological struggles framed and permeated the practices of everyday life. In fourteen separate photo essays, each with introductions and extensive captions, House of Bondage reflects upon the extent of everyday privilege and prejudice within public and domestic space in South Africa.