Academy Award®-nominated director Raoul Peck (“I Am Not Your Negro”) takes a close look at the life and work of one of South Africa’s first black independent photographers. Shocking at the time of publication, Ernest Cole’s early photographs exposed the brutality of apartheid and the life of the black community under its yoke. After fleeing South Africa in 1966, Cole settled in the United States, where he photographed New York and the American South extensively. He was fascinated by how the country could be both radically different and disturbingly similar to the culture of racial segregation in his homeland. It was during this period that he published his landmark work, the photo album House of Bondage, which was a condemnation of apartheid. Although the book was banned in South Africa, it established Cole as one of the most outstanding photographers of his time, when he was only 27. After his death, more than 60,000 negatives on 35mm film that had been thought lost for decades were found in a Swedish bank. Among them were thousands of previously unknown photographs taken by Cole in the US.
