May 7 – August 31
The National Ethnographic Museum in Warsaw
The photography exhibition of Ernest Cole examines a pivotal moment in the life of the legendary photographer. The showcased images document New York at the height of the Black civil rights movement in the United States. The exhibition will be presented in Poland for the first time.
Ernest Cole fled South Africa in 1966 and was officially made stateless in 1968. In a televised interview in 1969 he expressed a hope of being liberated from the day-to-day experience of racism. Focused on the humanity of everyday life, Cole spent his first years in New York City photographing Harlem and Manhattan, focusing his lens on the experience of living in a racialised America. Framed against the struggle for civil rights, Cole captured moments of emergent black awakenings, unfolding within public and private spaces by the forces of Black Pride and Black Power. Disillusioned and isolated in exile, he began to reflect that the systemic exclusion and segregation he experienced in South Africa was also prevalent in America. In his own words “it wasn’t any better: there was no freedom”.
The photographs displayed in the exhibition were taken between 1967–1972, representing a small chapter of Cole’s 45,000 images taken while in exile. In 2017, thousands of his negatives believed to have been missing for more than 40 years were discovered in a Stockholm bank vault. The Ernest Cole Family Trust was subsequently established to ensure Cole’s important photographic legacy is preserved.
The “Ernest Cole: A Lens in Exile” exhibition, curated by Mark Sealy, Director of Autograph and Professor of Photography – Rights and Representation, University of the Arts London, will be held at the National Ethnographic Museum in Warsaw from May 7 to August 31, 2025. It is organized by the Millennium Docs Against Gravity festival in collaboration with Autograph, London and Magnum Photos.
Partners: Autograph, Magnum Photos
