The True America features the work of Ernest Cole, a young, Black, South African photojournalist living in exile in America. Cole arrived in America in 1966 after “nearly seven tense, danger-filled years” spent documenting the conditions for Black South Africans under the brutal system of racial segregation known as apartheid. While enduring exile to publish his groundbreaking book House of Bondage, he turned his attention to his new home, producing tens of thousands of images looking sensitively at American life, in color and black-and-white. Thought to be lost entirely, the negatives of Cole’s American pictures resurfaced in Sweden in 2017.
The first stateside exhibition to bring together Cole’s extensive work from across America, The True America reflects both a new-found freedom that Cole felt in America, as well as Cole’s critical observations that his new home faced all too familiar struggles with racism and inequality.
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 60,000 of Cole’s negatives—missing for more than forty years—resurfaced in Sweden.
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 1960s at the University of Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art where she was a curatorial fellow from 2019 to 2021, and David Goldblatt: No ulterior motive at the Art Institute of Chicago with co-curators Matthew Witkovsky (AIC) and Judy Ditner (Yale). She has recently written for publications including Dear Dave, FOAM Magazine, and Manual, and interviewed Larry W. Cook for Weiss Berlin. From 2017-2021, she was Assistant Professor of Art History at Purchase College, SUNY. She holds a PhD in Art History from the University of Chicago and a BA in International Relations from Wellesley College.
Organized by Aperture and the Ernest Cole Family Trust. Curated by Leslie M. Wilson, PhD. This exhibition is made possible, in part, with generous support from the Ford Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. All images © Ernest Cole Family Trust.
Location: Meyerhoff Gallery (Fox Building, Floor 1)
On View: November 8- December 15, 2025
Reception: Thursday, December 4th, 5:00-7:00pm
Curator Talk: TBA
Campus Gallery Hours:
Open to the public Monday - Sunday, 10AM - 5PM. Outside visitors can enter galleries after signing in at the front desk of the respective building. PLEASE NOTE: On weekends outside visitors will need to be accompanied by a MICA community member with a MICA ID in order to swipe and gain access into respective buildings.