Re-discovering Ernest Cole

“He wasn’t just brave. He wasn’t just enterprising.
He was a supremely fine photographer.”
~ David Goldblatt

"Train Station" © The Ernest Cole Family Trust/Hasselblad Foundation Collection.

"Mine Recruitment" © The Ernest Cole Family Trust/Hasselblad Foundation Collection.

There currently is, in Johannesburg, an exhibition of work by the late Black photographer Ernest Cole (1941-1990) who depicted the humiliations and depredations of Apartheid during the 1960s. Much of his work has been neglected since his death and has escaped the vaults in part due to the efforts of David Goldblatt. The exhibition has generated notices in, among other places, The Independent, The Guardian, and The New York Times [1] [2] [3]. (There is a slide show of some of his work here and a much more extensive collection here.)

David Goldblatt in NYC

"Goldblatt, who never really considered himself a photojournalist, divides his work into two categories: the professional and the personal. The professional was what he did on assignment for some editor or corporation. . . . The personal was what he did out of his own deeply felt need to engage his tumultuous land and its people. It’s an engagement that went far beyond racial conflict and oppression without ever becoming distanced from those unavoidable realities. His way was always to go deeper, to find an oblique angle that went right to the heart of the matter: an image bespeaking loneliness, stunted aspiration, fragile pride on both sides of the racial divide, not infrequently with an intimation of imminent violence, or its result." ~ Joseph Lelyveld

Mofolo South, Soweto, September 1972.
Photograph © David Goldblatt.

I've mentioned South African photographer David Goldblatt here a number of times. Yet another exhibition of his work is running in NYC this summer. You can find an appreciation and slide show here at the NYRB blog. (The Goldblatt show is running in Tandem with an exhibition of films by fellow South African William Kentridge.)