Zanele Muholi is a self-described “visual activist” who uses photography to bring visibility to Black queer South Africans and spread awareness of the violence the LGBTQI+ community there has endured.

Born at the pinnacle of South African apartheid, Zanele Muholi was made acutely aware of the injustices of the world at a very young age. At the same time, Muholi witnessed firsthand how resistance, the spread of knowledge, and challenging the status quo even in the face of danger could affect real and revolutionary change. 

With contemporary society moving towards more inclusivity and more widespread recognition of systemic inequities (however haltingly and sporadic that progression may be), the importance of representation has come to the forefront of many cultural conversations. And the issue of representation in regards to race, gender identity, or sexuality, becomes all the more pressing when the people in question are being actively oppressed. As Muholi says, “...visibility also has its own politic especially for those in a space where some people are regarded as deviants. You are told you can exist, but at the same time there is this violence which also exists as a constant threat that denies you the right to be who you are, or who you want to be.” As such, Muholi’s photographic documentation of their community is an act of defiance. 

When apartheid ended in in the early 1990s, discrimination laws protecting gay and lesbian citizens were included in the new constitution. However, homophobia was still rampant, especially against Black lesbians and trans or gender non-conforming South Africans. Specifically, there was proliferation of a hate crime termed “corrective rape” in which lesbian presenting people are targeted. Muholi felt the need to document the victims of these crimes and to make visible the humanity of their community through photography, which they did in their first solo show in 2004 titled “Visual Sexuality: Only Half the Picture.” These photographs pictured victims of hate crimes anonymously and without reference to their gender, a precaution Muholi saw as necessary to protect the safety of their subjects. 

Muholi was right to take these precautions - their home has even been broken into and vandalized on account of their work. This backlash was not an isolated incident, and Muholi’s work has drawn criticism from all sides; at one of their exhibitions in 2009, Minister of Arts and Culture Lulu Xingwana walked out before a planned speech on account of Muholi's photographs featuring nude lesbian couples, citing them as “immoral, offensive and going against nation-building." 

Undeterred, Muholi’s “Faces and Phases” series consists of portraits of individuals in the LGBTQI+ community in South Africa, further asserting their existence. Rather than considering the people in these pictures as subjects, Muholi collaborates closely with their friends and colleagues to create the images. Muholi was inspired by a book given to them in photography school of artwork by Nan Goldin which documented underground subcultures in New York City during the 1980s. Of this work Muholi said, “‘It was good, but I longed for something that was Black.’’

More recently, Muholi has been exploring identity politics through a series of self-portraits. The series, titled "“Somnyama Ngonyama” ("“Hail the Dark Lioness” in Zulu) consists of 365 photographs, signifying one year. In the photos Muholi uses different props and costumes to symbolize aspects of their identity, stereotypes, and issues that have shaped their personal and local history, from a life-threatening uterine surgery, to police violence, to an art historical reference to odalisques (female slaves). They’ve been tangentially compared to Claude Cahun’s self-portraiture affirming their gender fluidity, or to Cindy Sherman’s costumed and staged self-portraits that reflect upon women in society, but the striking dark blacks and bright whites, intricate textures, and specifically South African references are entirely unique and immediately recognizable as Zanele Muholi.