How photojournalist captured the daily, mundane evil of Apartheid
Time machine of a film explores the forgotten genius of Ernest Cole
Thursday, 27th February — By Dan Carrier
ERNEST COLE: LOST AND FOUND
Directed by Raoul Peck
Certificate: 12a
☆☆☆☆☆
THIS extraordinary time machine of a film not only reveals to the world the forgotten genius of photo journalist Ernest Cole, nor solely acts as a valuable reminder of the evil of Apartheid and racism.
It is a fascinating personal tale of an artist whose life saw him bear witness.
Ernest Cole was a black South African photographer whose 1967 book House of Bondage drew wide acclaim for revealing the truth of life in South Africa.
Fast forward 50 years and 60,000 previously unseen negatives are found in a Swedish bank vault, showing Cole’s career in the United States as well as his home country.
Now, director Raul Peck retells Cole’s story.
As Cole says, his photojournalism showed the day-to-day reality of Apartheid: “I wasn’t describing exceptional cases. Legal indignitaries became part of an accepted reality of your existence – unavoidable, and in a way, tolerable, like a bad climate.”
The director has form. In 2016 he brought to the screenplay to William Baldwin’s long-form essay I Am Not Your Nergro, which looked at the black experience in the US.
This film takes a similar form. Ernest’s words are narrated by LaKeith Stanfield, and the cache of negatives gives Peck world-class imagery to accompany the photographer’s musings on race and politics.
Cole traversed South African society from the late 1950s, chronicling the fissures. By 1966 he had seen and suffered enough, and managed to get to New York.
Cole had been inspired by Herni Cartier-Bresson. This comes over in every photograph. He takes the everyday and elevates it to art: captures the streets and communities, the oppression in the everyday signs that say Whites Only. His time in the US shows how Jim Crow and Apartheid held hands across the Atlantic.
What comes over is Cole’s bravery. He was chronicling evil, and the white supremacists were not happy being recorded. He saw the Sharpeville massacre first hand, but while such infamous evils made global news, Cole captured the daily, mundane evil of Apartheid.
His camera was a beacon of truth and through his art, it became a tool of history.
Today, as the scourge of racism finds its way into mainstream discourse, Cole’s work is a valuable reminder of humans’ evil intentions towards its own species.
