Story highlights New York exhibition is showcasing the work of photographer Ernest Cole

The S. African photographer's images captured black life under apartheid

His 1967 book, House of Bondage, was banned in South Africa

Cole died in poverty in exile one week after Nelson Mandela's release from prison

(CNN) Inside a dilapidated warehouse, underneath scattered clothes hanging from rusty pipes, a young black man is down on his knees. His feet are naked, his trousers rolled up to his knees as he beats his sodden shirt against the ground to remove the dirt from it. Near him, a cluster of men cut desolate figures -- some of them crouching down to wash their worn-out clothes, some standing, naked, trying to clean up their work-wasted bodies.

This is not a scene from prison life -- but it might as well have been. Instead, this is a communal shower room for mineworkers in South Africa under apartheid as captured by pioneering photographer Ernest Cole some five decades ago.

A tiny man -- barely five feet tall -- with a great eye for detail, Cole was one of South Africa's first black photojournalists. His captivating and often clandestine images documented different aspects of black life under apartheid, opening a window into the oppression and economic inequality endured by his people during that brutal era, including mineworkers forced to live in squalid conditions.

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In 1967, one year after leaving South Africa to go into exile, Cole published his first and only photo book, entitled "House of Bondage." The book, which was banned in South Africa, quickly sold out and received great critical acclaim.

But despite the initial success, Cole died destitute and lonely in New York in 1990 and until recently his story was largely unknown.

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