Zanele Muholi defines herself as a visual activist first and an artist second. She uses both her voice and her photography to challenge homophobia, racialized patriarchies, and social injustice. In 2002, aware of a lack of NGOS servicing the needs of black lesbians in South Africa, Muholi cofounded FEW: Forum for the Empowerment of Women. FEW is a not-for-profit organization aimed at providing a safe social space for black lesbians and transgender(ed) people to work toward personal and political empowerment.
In 1994 Muholi completed a course in advanced photography at the Market Photography Workshop in Johannesburg, an organization known for training a new generation of South African documentary photographers. Her remarkable images are candid presentations of the black feminine body. They strike a balance between formal value and a gaze that manages to be nonobjectifying.
Her work actively engages with the sex and gender politics of the country, where lesbian women often become victims of rape, family disownment, and hate crimes. One series in her book and solo show Only Half the Picture at Michael Stevenson Contemporary in Cape Town (2006) documents physical attacks on lesbian women. Feminist writer Pumla Dineo Gqola argues that black lesbian women are not so much invisible as “hypervisible,” constantly in danger because they are so recognizable and vulnerable—especially butch-identified lesbians.
Muholi’s ongoing insights into these lives consist of more than just making them visible in a way that promotes social action; she also explores the aesthetics—and limits—of representing queer desire.
The reaction to Muholi’s frank photographs of the bodies of black lesbian women, which have included images of women menstruating, has not always been positive. Although she works with respect for her subjects, she courts controversy. A workshop entitled Gender and Visuality, held at the University of Western Cape, generated highly critical comments from members of the public. Muholi responded by making Enraged by a Picture (2005), a documentary film that aired these issues and emphasized the importance of giving a collective voice to lesbian desire. Her film has since been screened at nineteen international film festivals.
Initially Muholi’s work focused on black South African lesbian women. Recently she has begun photographing what gender theorist Judith Butler would call the “third sex,” gay men, transsexuals, and transvestites.
These photographs are less confrontational than some of her earlier work, yet they make an equally political point: that the construction of self as an object of desire, whether queer or straight, is always performed for an implied viewer. Zanele Muholi is an activist photographer precisely because she makes us more aware that our bodies and identities are always in the process of flux and interpretation, sometimes with our consent, sometimes without.
Being 2007
Triptych
Silver gelatin prints and a Lambda print
Each print: 20 x 22.5 cm
Images courtesy of the artist and the Michael Stevenson Gallery, Cape Town
© Zanele Muholi
Miss D’vine II 2007
Lambda print
86.5 x 86.5 cm
Images courtesy of the artist and the Michael Stevenson Gallery, Cape Town
© Zanele Muholi
Miss D’vine II 2007
Lambda print
86.5 x 86.5 cm
Images courtesy of the artist and the Michael Stevenson Gallery, Cape Town
© Zanele Muholi