Ernest Cole was one of the most impactful documenters of South African apartheid — and in Ernest Cole: Lost and Found, filmmaker Raoul Peck turns the lens back onto the photographer himself. Cole, the protagonist of Peck’s latest nonfiction film, broke the color barrier by picking up a camera at a time when photography was essentially a whites-only profession under South Africa’s racist regime. Born in 1940 in the Transvaal, Cole challenged the minority-rule government by creating a visceral visual record of the rigorously enforced racial separation policy of the repressive apartheid state.

Now Peck has restored Cole to his proper place in the annals of photojournalism with his new documentary. Ernest Cole: Lost and Found is narrated by LaKeith Stanfield, who received a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award nomination for the 2021 Black Panther Party drama, Judas and the Black Messiah, and reads from a text composed by Peck that incorporates words Ernest Cole wrote with testimony from Cole’s family, friends and co-workers.

Born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Peck has been making motion pictures since 1982, smoothly switching between nonfiction and fiction films. A versatile director, Peck helmed a 1991 documentary about Patrice Lumumba and then a 2000 feature about the same Congolese independence leader. His 2016 James Baldwin biopic, I Am Not Your Negro, was voiced by Samuel L. Jackson and Oscar-nominated for Best Documentary. His 2017 feature, The Young Karl Marx, dramatized the early years of communism’s founder. Peck’s 2021 anti-colonial HBO miniseries, “Exterminate All the Brutes,” combined documentary and narrative styles.

In this interview, Peck discusses why he decided to make a film about Ernest Cole, how the late photographer’s images exposed the reality of life in apartheid South Africa, the racism he encountered as an exile in America and why Cole’s work remains significant today.

Ed Rampell: How did you encounter Ernest Cole’s photography and decide to make a documentary about him?

Raoul Peck: I was approached by the family. They were in the process of recuperating all of the archives worldwide and reorganizing the estate. They have been trying for many years to make a documentary on Ernest Cole’s story and were never really successful. They tried two different producers. They asked me if I was willing to consider making a film about Ernest. At the time, I was very busy on finishing “Exterminate All the Brutes”; it was not possible.

I continued the dialogue with them. I helped them bring the archive back to South Africa. Then, when I was ready to dig into it again, I thought the project had all the different layers I want in my films and it would be important for today’s generation, and also [those in] my own generation, who have gone through the same period in their political engagement. It’s a homage to all those who — whether in the field, or in exile — fought for the freedom of their countries.

Ernest Cole was a Black South African photographer. What was his significance?

Beyond his talent and the incredible pictures he left us, he was the first to penetrate the belly of the beast. Coming back with incredible images of apartheid. Because there was excessive censorship in South Africa. You couldn’t publish any photos you wanted to; you had to go through censorship. Newspapers, everything was censored.

So, imagine a Black photographer — first of all, a Black photographer in itself was a rarity. They were able to publish some of their work within a certain constraint, or........

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