Ernest Cole (photographer)

In the early 1960s, he started to freelance for clients such as Drum magazine, the Rand Daily Mail, and the Sunday Express.

[1] He left school when the Bantu Education Act was put into place in 1953, and instead completed his diploma via a correspondence course with Wolsey Hall, Oxford.

[4] He started taking photographs at a very young age, eight years old, and in the 1950s, he was given a camera by a Roman Catholic priest, with which Cole broadened his portfolio.

In the book, Cole writes: "Three-hundred years of white supremacy in South Africa have placed us in bondage, stripped us of our dignity, robbed us of our self-esteem and surrounded us with hate.

There are still 504 photographs held at Hasselblad Foundation, with an estimated value over one million euros, and the ownership of these is in legal dispute.

[12][13] A cache of Cole's work having resurfaced in 2017,[14] his book House of Bondage was reissued in 2022 by Aperture in New York, including a new preface by Mongane Wally Serote and "a selection of previously unseen photographs of creative expression and cultural activity in Black communities; a useful corrective to the uniform view of oppression and subjugation that had been its focus.