Zanele Muholi
South African, born 1972
“Zinzi and Tozama I Mobray, Capetown,” Being Series
2010
Photograph
Collection of Zanele Muholi
South African visual activist Zanele Muholi is renowned for their body of work centered on LGBTQ issues in South Africa. Muholi’s series Being highlights the lived experiences of black lesbian couples, with a particular focus on love, intimacy, and joy. In this image, Muholi portrays the tender embrace of a black lesbian couple. They write that “it is through capturing the visual pleasures and erotica of my community that our being comes into focus, into community and national consciousness. And it is through seeing ourselves as we find love, laughter, joy that we can sustain our strength and regain our sanity as we move into a future that is sadly still filled with the threat of insecurities” (Muholi). Muholi’s work effectively destigmatizes portrayals of queer intimacy and speaks to the healing power of love in a world of uncertain survival for queer people.
Saidou Camara ’19
Bibliography
Bissonauth, Natasha. 2014. “Zanele Muholi’s Affective Appeal to Act.” Photography and Culture 7, no. 3: 239-251.
In this article, Natasha Bissonauth draws on photography theory and affect theory for art to argue that Muholi’s photography serves as an affective appeal to act by empathetically portraying the lives of a marginalized and oppressed group of individuals.
Muholi, Zanele. “Zanele Muholi: Being.” Michael Stevenson Gallery. http://archive.stevenson.info/exhibitions/muholi/being.htm
This webpage provides additional information about Zanele Muholi’s Being series from the artist themselves.
Thomas, Kylie. 2010. “Zanele Muholi’s Intimate Archive: Photography and Post-apartheid Lesbian Lives.” The Journal of South African and American Studies 11, no. 4: 421-436.
Kylie Thomas uses Muholi’s work to raise questions surrounding the representation of lesbian subjectivities and the political implications of such recognition.
van der Vlies, Andrew. 2012. “Queer knowledge and the politics of the gaze in contemporary South African photography: Zanele Muholi and others.” Journal of African Cultural Studies 24, no. 2: 140-156.
This article examines the work of Zanele Muholi and other South African photographers and uncovers the tensions present in the portrayals of black queer bodies and the use of photography as activism.
