The total man does not live one experience. Ernest Cole
Ernest Cole: Lost and Found is a documentary film that follows Ernest Cole, a South African independent photographer who exposed the horrors of the Apartheid in South Africa during the 1960s and 1970s.
From exposing the horrors of apartheid to racial segregation in the U.S.A, and his struggles in the 80s while in exile, Lost and Found holds one’s hand through Ernest’s life and creative mind through recovered photo negatives with poignant narration by LaKeith Stanfield.
While in South Africa, Cole exposes the details that don’t often appear in history books or mainstream media, like the tongue lashing experienced by Africans in the streets, the impossibility of leaving the mining camps even though under contract only to receive 8 dollars a month compensation once you become an amputee, the haunting realization by African housekeepers as they cuddle white babies that they’ll grow up to be as bitter to them as their parents, details brought to light by his photography. Always putting himself at risk, Cole documents the injustice of the penal system as an African’s pass doesn’t guarantee safety, as confiscation by police risks whipping. He also focuses on the mindset shift of the young African, whose reality has made him lose hope to the point of bitterness, not driven to fend more for himself.
Many have already believed the white man’s estimate of their worthlessness.
To those who give in to the white man’s manipulation through religion or any form of assimilation, Cole exposes their descent too.
Studying the white man’s language only to learn the terms of your servitude.
From the land of signs to the land of freedom, the United States of America, though the sentiment is far from the truth. Cole faces the same monster just wearing a different cloak.
In South Africa, I photographed my life, my reality. Here in the US, I am the other.
Apartheid here, Jim Crow there.
The Jim Crow Era was a period in United States history from the late 1870s to the mid-1960s when state and local laws enforced racial segregation and disenfranchised African Americans.
His life pivots as his work isn’t as well regarded by commissioners as before. He battles homelessness and homesickness as he documents other immigrants who go through the same, some not making it due to the mental turmoil and others finding their way back home but dying in poverty.
A certain confession fully describes the above. He highlights walking endlessly in the streets of New York for if he stops he dies. He however brings one back to the purpose of his work in the conclusion, stating;
I want the viewer to walk away with the message, not just a head filled with images.
Ernest Cole is a testament to the timelessness of art no matter the form. The sacrifices that sometimes make no sense but end up inspire millions.
Ernest Cole: Lost and Found not only foster geopolitical contemplation but lays bare some of the brutal realities experienced by independent artists who end up influencing cultures and ideas.
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