Ernest Cole:Lost and Found-Restoring An Artist’s Legacy

In 1967, a  year after photographer, activist, and essayist Ernest Cole fled South Africa, he published House of Bondage, a groundbreaking photo book that many consider one of the most significant of the 20th century. The first to expose the brutal realities of apartheid, featured images Cole risked his life for. He shot them with a camera hidden in a paper bag to thwart the ever present “Pass Police”, who would stop people on the streets, at railway stations, in homes, and at work to check their passes. Ernest Cole’s precious  negatives were smuggled out of the country. In a different time—or perhaps in a different world—Cole would have been celebrated and remembered in the press as were other activists from South Africa. At the very least, this hero would not have been forgotten and penniless when he passed. 

In Ernest Cole Lost and Found director Raoul Peck provides Cole the honor he so richly deserved by bringing his legacy to life by pairing Cole’s photos with his writings. Director Peck actually shares the writing credit for this Cannes Award Winning Documentary with Ernest Cole. The soulful readings from deeply personal diaries that Peck chooses, pull you in and guide you through his life. This approach moves it from a biopic to a drama. “I don’t do biography, I tell stories,” Peck explained. “I want you to be able to watch this film twice, get into the story and be caught by it. From the get-go, I knew that Ernest was telling his story,” Peck went on to say. “My Ernest should be an actor, not a narrator, not someone who will just read the text in a monotonous voice. As I did with I Am Not Your Negro, with Samuel L.Jackson being James Baldwin, you know? And that’s the magic of cinema. Once you are in it. You don’t go, “Oh, it’s not Ernest.” So I had a list of actors who I thought could be the voice, but who could carry that soul? Who could be real enough to make it work?”

And when Lakeith Lee Stanfield (Judas and the Black Messiah,Knives Out) voices Ernest Cole’s words it becomes real and powerful. As in any relationship there is a honeymoon phase; for Cole’s relocation to the U.S., it was short lived. Early on in the film we see Cole’s photos in New York City witnessing the freedom of expression and lively street life that flourished in places like Harlem, some shot in vivid colors. As his travel broadened, so did the subjects of photos as he moved around the U.S. midwest, Los Angeles and the rural south; where he  saw “racial attitudes that were very much like those I know from South Africa,” Cole said. And the powerful photos Cole shot there give us a fresh perspective to the harsh realities of racism in America. Though this disheartening reality slowed Cole’s creative output, still he had a freedom to create what he would be arrested for in his home country. However, for Ernest Cole, it was not home. Exiled by the South African government for exposing the brutal realities of Apartheid, Cole became a casualty of displacement—with a profound sense of dislocation shared by many immigrants and trauma survivors. Though Cole struggled with his mental and physical health as well as homelessness he lacked access to the resources to heal these wounds. “You’re powerless, you know, that can run you down as well,” Peck pointed out.

Raoul Peck explains, “Godard has this expression: Ici et Ailleurs, the idea of here and elsewhere. That’s my motto. This is something that has dominated my work since my first film. I am here and I’m elsewhere at the same time all my life. Whenever I was in France, in Germany, in the US, I was also in Haiti (Pecks home country where he held the office of Minister of Culture). And I could see the resemblance of this reality in Ernest’s photos, too. People think, “Oh, you’re in New York, so you’re happy and you’re free.” No, you are carrying everything on your shoulder. There is this one sentence when Ernest says, “You carry the smell of the prison on you.” “It doesn’t go away when you go to New York,” People forget that New York in the ‘60s was basically segregated. James Baldwin wrote about that—he lived in Holland, but going to Manhattan felt like going to a foreign country.” 

One of the most telling moments in the film is when Peck shines a light on the false narratives about the damage a boycott against South Africa’s apartheid regime would do to the oppressed population. We see clips of both Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan saying sanctions against South Africa would penalize the very population the anti-apartheid movement purported to help, because “most of the workers who would lose their jobs because of sanctions would be Black workers.”  When it is as we see now, about losing access to the mineral riches of the region.

Raoul Peck sees this as more than Ernest Cole’s story. Urging us all to critically analyze the narratives they encounter and apply this to all artists, especially “Black artists in South Africa, the U.S., and Europe. Challenge institutions who have been the gatekeepers and the so-called saviors of all their work. They need to be questioned. You know, there is a great movement right now to return all the goods to their original countries. For me, this film is embedded in that movement.”

Peck illustrates this at the end of the film when he provides detail about the loss of part of Cole’s photographic legacy. As of  May 7, 2024. 60,000 negatives that were discovered in the bank vault. “We still don’t know how they got there. We still don’t know who put them there. They are worth between 10,000 and 30,000 Euros each. Hasselblad said they were taking care of them during all those years and are happy to be giving them back. The truth is what we say in the film—they asked the Cole Family Trust to prove that those pictures belong to them.”