Land of the Free: Ernest Cole's Photographs of America

(Hardback)

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Thrilling never-before-seen photographs by groundbreaking South African photographer

Incisive survey of American society in the 1960s and 1970s

An important body of work that expands the history of photography

Author Bio

Ernest Cole(born in Transvaal, South Africa, 1940; died in New York, 1990) is best known for House of Bondage, a photobook published in 1967 that chronicles the horrors of apartheid. After fleeing South Africa in 1966, he became a banned person, settling in New York. He was associated with Magnum Photos and received funding from the Ford Foundation to undertake a project looking at Black communities and cultures in the United States. Cole spent an extensive time in Sweden and became involved with the Tiofoto collective. He died at age forty-nine of cancer. In 2017, more than six thousand of Coles negativesmissing for more than forty yearsresurfaced in Sweden. James Sandersis a journalist, researcher, and scholar. He has written extensively on South African politics, in such books as South Africa and the International Media, 19721979: A Struggle for Representation(1999) andApartheids Friends: The Rise and Fall of South Africas Secret Service(2006). He worked as a research specialist onAnthony Sampson Mandela: The Authorised Biography(1999), and on numerous documentary films, includingMandela: The Living Legend(2003) andMandelas Gun(2016). He served as a guest editor ofNoseweekand was the founding editor ofMolotov Cocktail. Sanders has concentrated his research on the life of Ernest Cole. Leslie M. Wilson is associate director for academic engagement and research at the Art Institute of Chicago. Her research, teaching, and curatorial endeavors focus on the history of photography, the arts of Africa and the African diaspora, modern and contemporary American art, and museum studies. Her current and forthcoming projects include not all realisms: photography, Africa, and the long 1960sat the University of Chicagos Smart Museum of Art where she was a curatorial fellow from 2019 to 2021, andDavid Goldblatt: No ulterior motiveat the Art Institute of Chicago with cocurators Matthew Witkovsky and Judy Ditner. She has written for numerous publications, includingDear Dave,FOAM, andManual. From 2017 to 2021, she was assistant professor of art history at Purchase College, SUNY.