[Forced resettlement]

The publication in 1967 of Ernest Cole’s House of Bondage stunned the world beyond South Africa as testimony of the horrors of the country’s apartheid system. What was happening in South Africa was, at the time, still little understood in mainstream circles internationally—largely the result of willful ignorance, considering the already highly visible work of anti-apartheid activists.Cole had lived under this system since it became law in his childhood. Inspired by the photojournalist Henri Cartier-Bresson, he set out to document it while still a teenager, at great peril to himself. Many of his pictures could have been grounds for life imprisonment. He had to learn to do his work invisibly. Following a number of arrests, Cole fled to New York City in 1966. When House of Bondage was published a year later it was immediately banned in South Africa.This image shows the forced resettlement of Black families. To apartheid authorities, Black-owned land in white-designated areas were “black spots.” It was government policy to forcibly remove residents from these areas and bulldoze their homes. Cole and his parents had experienced this themselves, as would almost three million South Africans before the end of the apartheid era. —Kate Addleman-Frankel, The Gary and Ellen Davis Curator of Photography