[Forced resettlement]
- Title:
- [Forced resettlement]
- Collection:
- Introduction to Photography Collections at Cornell
- Set:
- History of photography
Inequality and legacies of discrimination - Creator:
- Cole, Ernest
- Creation Date:
- 1958-1966
- ID Number:
- 2019.041.002
- File Name:
- 2019.041.002.jpg
- Work Type:
- Photograph
- Materials/Techniques:
- gelatin silver prints
- Subject:
- Apartheid.
Apartheid--South Africa.
documentary photography
Magnum photo - Measurement:
- 8 x 10 3/16 (Sheet) (inches, height x width)
- Description:
- Black South Africans load their personal belongings onto an open bed truck. In the center of the image a young boy, barefoot, is reaching forward to take a wooden table and older man is lifting onto the truck. Another boy is approaching from behind him, on the left of the frame, down a running board tied on to the truck bed next to the cabinet and wash basins already on board. To the right a group of women, including one with a baby wrapped onto her back, are standing amid other household effects. Beyond them, several workmen are on top of the next house over, prying off the tin roof.
The publication in 1967 of Ernest Cole’s House of Bondage stunned the world beyond South Africa as testimony of the horrors of the country’s apartheid system. What was happening in South Africa was, at the time, still little understood in mainstream circles internationally—largely the result of willful ignorance, considering the already highly visible work of anti-apartheid activists. Cole had lived under this system since it became law in his childhood. Inspired by the photojournalist Henri Cartier-Bresson, he set out to document it while still a teenager, at great peril to himself. Many of his pictures could have been grounds for life imprisonment. He had to learn to do his work invisibly. Following a number of arrests, Cole fled to New York City in 1966. When House of Bondage was published a year later it was immediately banned in South Africa. This image shows the forced resettlement of Black families. To apartheid authorities, Black-owned land in white-designated areas were “black spots.” It was government policy to forcibly remove residents from these areas and bulldoze their homes. Cole and his parents had experienced this themselves, as would almost three million South Africans before the end of the apartheid era. —Kate Addleman-Frankel, The Gary and Ellen Davis Curator of Photography, Johnson Museum of Art - Notes:
- One of two gelatin silver prints in the Johnson Museum collection by Cole.
- Cite As:
- Ernest Cole, (South African, 1940-1990), [Forced resettlement], 1958-1966. Gelatin silver print, sheet: 8 x 10 3/16 in. Acquired through the stephanie L. Wiles Endowment, TR 10210.002.
- Repository:
- Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art
- Format:
- Image
- Rights:
- The copyright status and copyright owners of most of the images in the Mellon Teaching Sets Collection are unknown. Whenever possible, information on current rights owners is included with the image. Digitization took place at varied times from items held at Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art in service of a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Cornell is providing access to low-resolution, non-downloadable versions of the materials as a digital aggregate under an assertion of fair use for non-commercial research and educational use. The written permission of any copyright and other rights holders is required for distribution, reproduction, or other use that extends beyond what is authorized by fair use and other statutory exemptions. For more information about these volumes, please contact the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at museum@cornell.edu. Responsibility for making an independent legal assessment of an item and securing any necessary permissions ultimately rests with persons desiring to use the item.