Ernest Levi Tsoloane Cole

Ernest Levi Tsoloane Cole (March 21, 1940 – February 19, 1990) was a South African photographer whose work offered one of the earliest and most unflinching visual records of apartheid. Born in Eersterust, Pretoria, Cole became interested in photography at a young age and went on to become one of South Africa’s first Black freelance photographers, working for publications including Drum, the Rand Daily Mail, and the Sunday Express.  Cole is best known for House of Bondage (1967), his landmark photobook documenting the daily violence, humiliation, and structural brutality of apartheid in South Africa. After leaving South Africa in 1966, he lived in exile in New York, where he continued photographing and later turned his lens toward Black life in the United States. His images combine documentary urgency with formal precision, revealing how race, labor, space, and surveillance shape everyday life.