Lost Photographs of Black America

Then, in 2017, a member of Cole’s family was mysteriously invited to Stockholm at the behest of a Swedish bank. There, in three safety-deposit boxes, were tens of thousands of negatives, many taken during Cole’s years in America. The True America, released by Aperture in January, showcases this collection, much of which had not been previously published. Cole did not leave behind detailed information about these photos, which means that today’s viewers must infer from context what they depict. We do know that the American series began with a grant he received from the Ford Foundation to essentially replicate his work on apartheid in the urban ghettos and on the rural plantations that dominated Black American life. He must have been ambivalent about the project: Cole had come to America hoping to broaden his portfolio, and he did not want to be pigeonholed as someone who captured only oppression. Still, there’s an insurgent air about this collection. In the Black communities Cole visited in the late 1960s and early ’70s, he found people smiling, lounging, dancing, and worshipping. At a time when interracial marriage was intensely controversial, he captured a Black man and a white woman embracing on a New York subway. Cole paid attention to the media that Black people created and consumed: newspapers from the Nation of Islam, ads for Ultra Sheen Creme Satin-Press, adult magazines. He covered major historical events, traveling to Lowndes County, Alabama, during its famed freedom struggle, and to the funeral of Martin Luther King Jr. in Atlanta, on April 9, 1968. His photographs are inversions of the authoritative images ingrained in our collective memory from those moments. Cole’s world is front porches and vanity plates and processed hair: history, from below.