Ernest Cole: House of Bondage

Moving exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery marking the 1967 book “House of Bondage” by Ernest Cole.

Cole published the book in exile in America and it is seen as one of the most important photo books  to record life in Apartheid South Africa and revealing its brutality and injustice to the world.

The pictures were shown in the same chapter themes as the book and all the commentaries were in Cole’s own words which added an immediacy to them.

The images were clear and effective and told the stories of the people shown simply.   The sheer inhumanity of the stories being told still beggar belief. I kept wondering what had happened to individuals.

The most bizarre pictures were of rush hour trains which highlighted the illogical absurdity of making the black populations live a long distance from the cities while providing the Labour needed in them without reasonable train provision.

Closed 22 September 2024


Review

Telegraph


 

 

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