What matters the most is the content,
who is in the picture and why are they there?
My name is Zanele Muholi, I call myself a visual activist
I take photographs, I capture videos
I just capture the moods that maybe other people cannot see
I focus mainly on documentary photography and portraiture per se
of black LGBTI people. Just to be precise, of black lesbian, gay, bisexual,
trans, queer, intersex persons from South Africa
The work that I produce is meant to be for every person
It could be a teacher, it could be a mother whose child is queer
and want to have a reference point to show to their kids
and say that you are not alone, and it could be for the LGBTI people themselves
to understand their worthiness
then it becomes political, to say, "How do we politicize spaces
with ourselves in a conscious way that tends to be
ignored by those who are in positions of power?"
Talking about photography specifically
and the need to capture images of ourselves, of our lives
is not necessarily about beauty per se
but it's about the need of documenting realities of people who deserve to be heard
who deserve to be seen and whose lives are often excluded as part of the Canon
I want to believe that the work touches the soul in ways that you don't often see
I like to call the people who are in my photographs not subjects, but participants
And i think that to say they're subjects we're divorcing ourselves
from that human to human connection that's supposed to happen
One of the projects that I've focused on is titled
'Somnyama Ngonyama' in which I'm praising my ancestry
I thought that it was very, very important for one to do so
because when we document and photograph other people, we tend to forget about ourselves
I wanted to find an artistic expression to deal with the painful experiences
that I was going through by drawing back to historical moments
I have photographed so many people, I have captured so many videos
and having documented painful experiences of other people without
dealing with my own pain, I needed to remember me
I don't mind to be in front of the camera because I know how uneasy
it is sometimes for people to be in front of the camera
That picture to someone looks beautiful or ugly but to me
it means something because it's based on an experience
that I have faced or went through
'Only Half the Picture' is mostly about skin
I wanted to say that sexuality and gender of a person is skin deep
it's not about the clothes that we wear, how you speak, how you walk, the queer self is the heart
in my world, every human is beautiful, it's the kindness and what comes from within
that is beautiful. It's not the outer layer
Then there's 'Brave Beauties' which is a series
mainly of transgender women who are former beauty queens
Beautiful girls that I've worked with for many years now
Then there is 'Faces and Phases', which is a series of black and white portraits
featuring lesbian, bi, trans and gender-nonconforming bodies
mostly head and shoulders, which is in your face
I wanted the viewer or the person being photographed
engage with each other, so each and every portrait becomes one biography
the fact that they are there means they have
given our movement something that is whole
that helps the next person to know that they are not alone
It's one thing to say that photography's easy, it’s universal
it speaks so many languages
but deep down to homophobes, queerphobes and transphobes, it differs
because seeing maybe a flamboyant queen changes the context altogether
so, what then I'm trying to do now, was to
find a language that spoke to me as a Zulu speaking person
to say, "Okay, I'm creating ‘self’ and ‘selves’ in space
and I want people to understand our existence and presence
to say, ‘we exist’" So that existence comes with a visibility that is positive
Photography has given me that space to express the self
in ways that I would not have been able to if I used another medium
Photography, like videography, is super expensive
which I think limits many people with beautiful stories
and important narratives that could be conveyed
and I started without knowing where the work was going to end up at places like Tate
I knew that something important had to happen
but I didn't know that it was going to end up in places
like the museums and important galleries around the world
South Africa is not a homogeneous space
We are a beautiful country, we have the most amazing and beautiful people too
I could say like in any other space where there are human beings
and its own challenges, we still live and we have hope
that one day we'll get it right