Ernest Cole: Lost and Found

Ernest Cole was a photographer in South Africa. He documented apartheid from inside: pass checks, working conditions in the mines, hospitals, schools and segregated living areas. When his photographs were published as a book he could no longer enter the country and went into exile. He lived in New York and could not find work. He died in 1990 at forty nine. Years later crates were found in a bank vault in Sweden containing thousands of his negatives, and who put them there is unknown. Raoul Peck directs. The documentary proceeds with a narration made from Cole's own writing; the narrator speaks in the first person. The photographs are at the centre; the frames are held on screen for long stretches and the circumstances of taking them are described. Its second subject is exile: Cole met discrimination in America too and could not settle there either; he spent his last years homeless. How the negatives reached Sweden and why they stayed there for thirty years has still not been explained, and the documentary leaves the question open. Raoul Peck is known for archive based documentary and the method is the same here. Who it is for: anyone interested in the history of photography and the apartheid period. Who it is not for: the subject is heavy, the structure repeats, and the narrative does not resolve the question of the loss.