[Sidewalk scene, Pretoria, South Africa]
Ernest Cole South African
Not on view
Ernest Cole, in order to more fully document contemporary life in South Africa in the 1960s, befriended gangs of petty criminals known locally as Tsotsis (who derived their name from Amercian "zoot-suiters"). According to Cole, these teen-age delinquents, who preyed equally on victims in black townships and white urban centers, preferred thievery to low-paying, regular work. This photograph of an older white man breaking free from a band of tsotsis was paired in Cole's book, House of Bondage, with its immediate precursor. In that view, one of the youths chucks the man under his chin, distracting and infuriating him; at the same time, a second teen rifles through the man's back pocket undetected.
