Zanele Muholi: queer South African visual activist cements their global influence

South African visual activist Zanele Muholi’s celebrated work centres the lives and experiences of Black lesbians and trans people. For more than two decades Muholi has used photography to courageously open space for queer representation within and outside of art galleries in South Africa and across the world. Muholi uses the non-binary pronouns they/them/their and prefers the term “visual activist” over “artist” or “photographer”. This makes it clear that their work is explicitly political and is intended to bring about change through transforming how Black LGBTIQ+ people are portrayed and perceived. Together with the participants who feature in their portraits, they have produced a vast visual archive that asserts the right to live in safety and freedom, that rages against injustice, and that celebrates love and community. As a researcher of South African history with a focus on photography, I’ve been publishing studies on Muholi’s work for many years. Their work is included in a book of mine. Muholi has shown at major art galleries across the world and has received many honours, including an honorary professorship in Germany, an honorary doctorate in Belgium, and a knighthood in France. Their work has won many awards, a list that now includes the world’s largest prize for photography, the Hasselblad Award.

Granted by the Hasselblad Foundation in Sweden, the award is for leading photographers whose work influences new generations. Muholi joins an illustrious list of previous recipients that includes Nan Goldin (US), Ingrid Pollard (UK), and Malick Sidibé (Mali). The award further secures Muholi’s place in the history of photography and recognises the importance of their work in fundamentally re-visualising how Black African LGBTIQ+ experiences are seen and understood. From Umlazi to the world Born in 1972, Muholi grew up in Umlazi, a township (Black residential area) outside Durban on South Africa’s east coast. Muholi’s mother, the family’s sole breadwinnner, laboured as a domestic worker for more than 40 years. The end of apartheid in 1994 meant that the country’s racist and homophobic laws were overturned. A new constitution guaranteed equality for all. Muholi began their visual activist practice at this critical moment. They studied photography at the Market Photo Workshop in Johannesburg in the early 2000s, mentored by celebrated South African photographer David Goldblatt.

Muholi is one of the first Black women photographers to work in South Africa, along with the likes of Mabel Cetu, Mavis Mtandeki, Primrose Talakumeni, Ruth Motau, Lindeka Qampi, and Ingrid Masondo. They are the first to focus on the LGBTIQ+ community. While Muholi’s visual activism draws on the traditions of “struggle photography”, the socially committed forms of photography that developed in resistance to the apartheid regime (1960-1994), their work moves beyond documentation. Black love and hate crimes Their early images portray love, care and intimacy between Black lesbians. They also draw attention to the disconnect between the promise of the constitution and the lived experiences of many South Africans. Their first exhibition was held at the Johannesburg Art Gallery in 2004. Their first book, Only Half the Picture, portrays lesbian life, including the traumatic aftermath of sexual violence and homophobic hate crimes. In these works Muholi uses their camera to refuse the erasure of those who have been subject to rape. Their images serve as visual evidence. This commitment has not ceased through years of work. National debate In 2009, South Africa’s then minister of arts and culture, Lulu Xingwana, walked out of an exhibition that contained several of Muholi’s photographs. She reportedly called them “immoral” and “against nation-building”. This placed Muholi’s work at the centre of a national debate about homophobia, freedom of expression, and queer experience. It fuelled their dedication to documenting their community. Their ongoing and extensive series of portraits of Black lesbians and trans South Africans, Faces and Phases, creates an intimate archive that uses and subverts the conventions of studio portrait photography.

The series is a beautiful portrayal of community and at the same time a work of protest that insists that those killed in homophobic attacks are recognised and commemorated. Muholi’s commitment to co-creating the portraits that form part of Faces and Phases is made clear in a short film. Several of the participants in the project have been mentored by Muholi and are now visual activists and photographers themselves. This includes Collen Mfazwe, whose work documenting his own experiences as a trans man in South Africa has been exhibited in the US. Self portraits Muholi has always included self-portraits as part of their exhibitions. But, from 2012 onwards they increasingly used their own image to produced work that interrogates race and representation.

Muholi’s series Somnyama Ngonyama (Hail the Dark Lioness) uses self-portraiture as a sangoma or shaman might. The medium of photography becomes a portal through which ancestral spirits are made manifest. Several works in this series were made in homage to their mother, Bester Muholi, and incorporate everyday objects used for cleaning and for practical purposes in the home, such as pegs, gloves, feather dusters, and pot-scourers. These take on near-talismanic properties as they are transformed into fantastical adornments. These photographs are a powerful meditation on Blackness and being. They summon a new and resistant form of visual language to expose and contest the racist violence – structural and physical, historical and contemporary – that have determined how Black people have been represented. The series has been published as two photo books. Collective practice Muholi is not only a brilliant photographer. Their vision of a visual archive that documents the history of Black LGBTQI+ communities is being realised through a commitment to collective practice. Muholi is accompanied to all their exhibitions by participants who appear in the work and who speak to audiences about their experiences. The wide-reaching impact of Muholi’s work in creating and sustaining visual activism in South Africa can perhaps best be seen through Inkanyiso, the collective Muholi founded in 2009 to support LGBTQI+ activists, writers and photographers in South Africa. In 2022 Muholi founded the Muholi Art Institute to empower and support young people and emerging artists and to foster collaborations. In response to receiving the Hasselblad Award, Muholi states: This award is not mine alone. I carry it with the many people who have entrusted me with their stories. From Umlazi to every place where black LGBTQIA+ people continue to struggle to exist freely, this recognition confirms that our lives are worth seeing – not as statistics, not as shadows, but as full human beings. They continue: For many years, my work has been about visibility and resistance. It has been about creating an archive so that no one can say, ‘We didn’t know.’ When this honor comes, I accept it for my community; those who are no longer with us, those who are still here, and those who have yet to see themselves reflected with dignity. Muholi’s work never shies away from pain and loss. But, like all the best forms of visual activism, it shows us the darkness to take us to the light. A solo exhibition of Muholi’s work will be held at the Hasselblad Center in Gothenburg, Sweden from 10 October 2026 to 4 April 2027.

Kylie Thomas does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.