Zanele Muholi does not call themselves a photographer. They prefer the term visual activist. Since the early 2000s, Muholi has photographed Black lesbian, gay, transgender and intersex South Africans, many of whom live with the threat of violence. Their portraits are calm, direct and dignified, with subjects looking straight into the camera. Muholi’s work has been shown in major museums around the world and has changed how queer African lives are seen in art.
Early life and Faces and Phases
Muholi was born in 1972 in Umlazi, a township near Durban. They studied photography at the Market Photo Workshop in Johannesburg, founded by David Goldblatt. Muholi uses photography to document and support communities facing discrimination. Faces and Phases is a long-running series of black-and-white portraits of Black lesbian, transgender and gender non-conforming people. The series creates a visual archive of people often ignored or attacked in South African society.
Muholi’s work responds to hate crimes, including so-called corrective rape, against lesbian women in South Africa.
Somnyama Ngonyama and Inkanyiso
In the self-portrait series Somnyama Ngonyama, meaning Hail the Dark Lioness, Muholi uses everyday objects as costume and darkens their skin tone to explore race and identity. Their work has been shown at Tate Modern in London and many other institutions. Muholi has received numerous awards and honours. They co-founded Inkanyiso, a platform for queer visual media and activism.
In 2012, their studio was burgled and hard drives containing years of work were stolen. Muholi has inspired a generation of African artists working on identity and representation. Their archive is one of the most important records of queer African life.
Participants, monochrome and teaching
Muholi often calls the people they photograph participants rather than subjects. Many have been photographed more than once over the years, so the series records how their lives change. The work is built on trust, and participants are involved in how their images are shared. The use of black and white gives the portraits a timeless, documentary quality and focuses attention on the faces.
Muholi has run workshops to train young people from their communities in photography. Muholi’s subjects look straight into the camera. In a country where many of them have been attacked for being visible, the direct stare is the point of the photograph.
