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View at the museum ↗Tumi Nkopane, KwaThema, Johannesburg
Zanele Muholi2013, printed 2014
- Attribution
- Zanele Muholi South African, born 1972
- Medium
- Gelatin silver print, from "Faces & Phases"
- Physical dimensions
- Image: 76.5 × 50.1 cm (30 1/8 × 19 3/4 in.); Paper/mount: 86.8 × 60.5 cm (34 3/16 × 23 7/8 in.)
- Credit line
- Artworker's Retirement Society
Museum metadata is available under CC0. Image availability and rights are separate; consult the source record.
Source rights statement: © 2013 Zanele Muholi.
View the museum record ↗From the museum
A self-described “visual activist,” Zanele Muholi aims—in both their photographs and social activism—to redefine the face of Africa and combat violence against the LGBT community. In 2006 they began a series of portraits, Faces and Phases, celebrating black lesbians in Africa. The photographs became an archive of positive images of black queer culture, in their words “marking, mapping, and preserving an often invisible community for posterity.” Muholi counters oppression by ensuring visibility, giving human expression to otherwise faceless statistics. In the vein of August Sander, whose photographs of the people of Germany catalogued a range of professions, they have documented this community’s rich diversity by photographing actresses, soccer players, scholars, dancers, filmmakers, writers, activists, and others. In each of these compelling portraits, their subjects face the camera with forcefulness and dignity.
Description: Art Institute of Chicago · CC BY 4.0