Ernest Cole is famous for photographing the everyday realities of South Africa’s racist apartheid system. His 1967 book House of Bondage ensured his damning critique of the white minority regime was seen by the world. But its publication sent him into exile and was banned at home.
The startling discovery of a vast archive of his work in a Swedish bank vault in 2017 has returned him to public view.
House of Bondage was republished in 2023 and then, in 2024, celebrated Haitian film-maker Raoul Peck made Ernest Cole: Lost and Found.
