Audio description in galleries and museums aims to make visual information accessible using verbal description. The Photographers' Gallery has, for several years, also linked audio description to slow looking and to visual literacy.
The audio files for an introduction to the exhibition and five audio descriptions for five works in the exhibition are below. A transcript of each audio description is also available.
These audio descriptions have been produced by Eleanor Margolies, a writer and audio describer. She has a background in puppetry and theatre design, with interests in ecology and the role of the senses in performance. She audio describes in museum, theatre and dance contexts.
About Ernest Cole: House of Bondage
South African photographer Ernest Cole (1940–1990) is considered one of the most important chroniclers of apartheid politics.
This substantial exhibition revisits Cole’s ground-breaking project House of Bondage.
In 1966 Cole fled South Africa and smuggled out his photographs, settling in New York. House of Bondage was published in 1967 and revealed the brutality and injustice of apartheid to the world, vividly documenting the everyday life of the Black population in South Africa. It became one of the most significant photobooks of the twentieth century.
In more than 100 photographs, the exhibition covers all 15 thematic chapters into which Cole has divided House of Bondage and also includes works from the chapter Black Ingenuity, which was not published in the original edition of the book.
Introduction to the exhibition Ernest Cole: House of Bondage
Below: Pensive tribesmen, newly recruited to mine labour, awaiting processing and assignment. South Africa. 1960s. © Ernest Cole / Magnum Photos
Below: Doornfontein railway station in rush hour. This picture shows the reality of apartheid without the need for any words. South Africa. 1960s. © Ernest Cole / Magnum Photos
Below: Living in her ”kaya” out back, servant must be on call six days out of seven and seven nights out of seven. She lives a lonely life apart from her family. In white suburbs there are no recreation centres open to black servants. South Africa.1960s. © Ernest Cole / Magnum Photos
Below: Students kneel on floor to write. Government is casual about furnishing schools for blacks. South Africa. 1960s. © Ernest Cole / Magnum Photos
Below: From the book, House of Bondage. One of a collection of images from the chapter entitled “Black Ingenuity.” South Africa. 1966. © Ernest Cole / Magnum Photos
