What do you think?
Rate this book
House of Bondage
From the "The House of Bondage is the dwelling-place of the black people of South Africa, whose bitter life is one of the tragedies of our century. Ernest Cole has lived the tragedy as an inmate of the House for most of his twenty-seven years. A remarkably gifted photographer and an eloquent spokesman, he...exiled himself to expose the harsh realities of his homeland. From his unique vantage point, Cole sees every aspect of South Africa's degradation with a searching eye and a passionate heart." Ernest Cole is the subject of a major retrospective exhibition, organized by The Hasselblad Foundation, and currently on tour in South Africa. From there, it will travel to the Hasselblad Center before debuting in the United States.
192 pages, Hardcover
First published June 1, 1967
3 people are currently reading
322 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
July 28, 2016
I started reading portions of this book at the Apartheid Museum in Joburg. It was so brilliant, I had to get the book once home. Every word of the first chapter hits like a sledge hammer. Ernest Cole documents the inhumanity and injustice of life under Apartheid in such profound detail. He weaves his pointed observations with his stark photos to show the depths of how petty hateful, and cruel mankind can be.
March 12, 2024
Incredible exposé of life under apartheid as a black man in South Africa. Highly recommend reading this with Long Walk to Freedom, it is mostly photos but the chapters themselves and very interesting and important to read.
November 3, 2017
House of Bondage is an incredible, moving, and courageous exposé of apartheid South Africa by a black South African photographer in 1967. Cole risked everything to create this book and had to go into exile in the United States in order to publish it. In it, he includes text and photographs about a wide variety of black South Africans and their experiences in schools, on trains, at hospitals, on the streets, at church, as servants, as miners, as the rare members of the middle class, and more. It is a great source for understanding apartheid and the ways in which it played out in the lives of everyday people, and Cole's writing on the topic, based on interviews and his own personal experience, is quite powerful. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn about life under apartheid.
May 12, 2023
I saw an exhibit of Ernest Cole's photographs at the Foam photography museum in Amsterdam. I knew nothing about it before I walked in. As soon as I entered the exhibit, it grabbed me and wouldn't let go. I knew as soon as I saw these photos and read their captions that I needed to buy this book. I bought it immediately at the museum gift shop, and I am so glad I did.
House of Bondage is a harrowing, heartbreaking gut punch of photographs and short essays on the daily lives of African people in apartheid South Africa. It is not an easy read, but it is powerful; Cole's words and photographs will stay with you. Cole was an African born and raised in South Africa; he got his race legally changed from Black to "mixed" and changed his surname from "Kole" to "Cole." This allowed him a bit more freedom to exist in society and to document the horrors of South African apartheid with his camera.
The South African government was obviously not wild about the prospect of the wider world learning about the nightmarish daily lives of Africans there, so Cole had to smuggle his camera into places like mines, hospitals, and prisons. Apparently in the mines, he hid his camera in his lunch bag and took photos through a hole in the bag. The fact that he pulled this off without being jailed for life or killed is remarkable. The fact that he smuggled his photos out of South Africa to be published in the US is even more remarkable. Cole was a gifted photographer, a compelling essayist, and an incredibly brave artist.
This is not just a book of photos, although the photos are excellent. Cole also wrote short essays introducing each chapter of House of Bondage, and those really stayed with me. Weeks after finishing this book, the chapter on shunning lingers in my mind. The whole time I read and looked at the photos, I kept having the same thought over and over again: how did I not know about this? Apartheid South Africa is barely mentioned in American schools (or at least that was the case when I was in school). Going into this book, I had a vague idea that apartheid was something quite bad, and that Nelson Mandela was a hero for liberating Africans from its oppressive clutches. But that was about it. I was totally ignorant before this book.
Perhaps it shouldn't have shocked me, but the thing that really shook me to my core was how every facet of African life—every single thing, big and small—was carefully orchestrated and controlled to be maximally degrading and humiliating and cruel. From big things like having their houses destroyed if they were located in a neighborhood where white people wanted to live to small things like the kind of beer they were allowed to drink, from medical care and education to the trains they took to work, everything was designed to make Africans suffer physically and emotionally, while keeping them just alive enough to keep working for their white overlords. It's truly appalling stuff; the calculating, deliberate nature of the cruelty made it even harder to stomach.
This book is not an easy book. But it really opened my eyes to something I should have known about long ago, and it left me wanting to know much more. How did things get this way? How did they start to change? What is life like for Black South Africans today? House of Bondage is an unflinching, honest glimpse into the devastating effects of human racism, cruelty, and malice. This haunting photo series should be required viewing for everyone.
House of Bondage is a harrowing, heartbreaking gut punch of photographs and short essays on the daily lives of African people in apartheid South Africa. It is not an easy read, but it is powerful; Cole's words and photographs will stay with you. Cole was an African born and raised in South Africa; he got his race legally changed from Black to "mixed" and changed his surname from "Kole" to "Cole." This allowed him a bit more freedom to exist in society and to document the horrors of South African apartheid with his camera.
The South African government was obviously not wild about the prospect of the wider world learning about the nightmarish daily lives of Africans there, so Cole had to smuggle his camera into places like mines, hospitals, and prisons. Apparently in the mines, he hid his camera in his lunch bag and took photos through a hole in the bag. The fact that he pulled this off without being jailed for life or killed is remarkable. The fact that he smuggled his photos out of South Africa to be published in the US is even more remarkable. Cole was a gifted photographer, a compelling essayist, and an incredibly brave artist.
This is not just a book of photos, although the photos are excellent. Cole also wrote short essays introducing each chapter of House of Bondage, and those really stayed with me. Weeks after finishing this book, the chapter on shunning lingers in my mind. The whole time I read and looked at the photos, I kept having the same thought over and over again: how did I not know about this? Apartheid South Africa is barely mentioned in American schools (or at least that was the case when I was in school). Going into this book, I had a vague idea that apartheid was something quite bad, and that Nelson Mandela was a hero for liberating Africans from its oppressive clutches. But that was about it. I was totally ignorant before this book.
Perhaps it shouldn't have shocked me, but the thing that really shook me to my core was how every facet of African life—every single thing, big and small—was carefully orchestrated and controlled to be maximally degrading and humiliating and cruel. From big things like having their houses destroyed if they were located in a neighborhood where white people wanted to live to small things like the kind of beer they were allowed to drink, from medical care and education to the trains they took to work, everything was designed to make Africans suffer physically and emotionally, while keeping them just alive enough to keep working for their white overlords. It's truly appalling stuff; the calculating, deliberate nature of the cruelty made it even harder to stomach.
This book is not an easy book. But it really opened my eyes to something I should have known about long ago, and it left me wanting to know much more. How did things get this way? How did they start to change? What is life like for Black South Africans today? House of Bondage is an unflinching, honest glimpse into the devastating effects of human racism, cruelty, and malice. This haunting photo series should be required viewing for everyone.
December 16, 2021
I came across Ernest Cole and his photo journalism at the S Africa at the apartheid museum in 2018. It was unforgettable.
Unfortunately, his work was not sold at the gift shop and this book was out of print. Scarce copies exist. I waited years for a reissue that never came. Finally found a copy on EBay for a reasonable sum.
It is plainly honest on difficult horrors, like Boroswki on the holocaust. It touches all aspects of life under apartheid — transportation, education, medicine, religion, work and family with essays and photographs. If you can find it, get it. It is a haunting study.
Unfortunately, his work was not sold at the gift shop and this book was out of print. Scarce copies exist. I waited years for a reissue that never came. Finally found a copy on EBay for a reasonable sum.
It is plainly honest on difficult horrors, like Boroswki on the holocaust. It touches all aspects of life under apartheid — transportation, education, medicine, religion, work and family with essays and photographs. If you can find it, get it. It is a haunting study.
February 12, 2023
House of Bondage is a photographic exposé of apartheid South Africa by a Ernest Cole completed in 1967. Cole was forced to leave his native county and go into exile in the United States to publish his photos. The accompanying text was obviously out of date by 2023 since so much has changed in the world and more so in South Africa.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews