Artist: Ernest Cole

Rediscovered Vintage Prints from a South African in Exile

Goodman Gallery New York presents a remarkable group of rare vintage prints by the late South African photographer Ernest Cole, which resurfaced after more than four decades. Together, these works offer an extraordinary new perspective on Cole’s years documenting Black life in the United States during the late 1960s and early 1970s.

The prints, preserved within the Hasselblad collection for over 40 years, were recently returned to the Ernest Cole Family Trust. While a number of vintage prints from Cole’s American body of work are held in institutional collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, this group offers a new opportunity to encounter works that have remained largely inaccessible for decades. Following the publication of several of these photographs in The True America – the first book dedicated to Cole’s photographs of Black life in the United States – the exhibition reunites a significant body of vintage prints, many of which have been scarcely exhibited, offering an exceptionally unusual insight into a pivotal yet underexamined period of his career.