South Africa / 2005 / 14mins / Documentary / English

A photographer, Muholi is celebrating her exhibition in Johannesburg. Efficiently confrontational, the exhibition causes a stir and provokes an outcry on a subject that is particularly taboo: being black, and in this case, being lesbian. Forthright and beautifully shot, each monochrome photo captures the present reality of the photographer's subjects, the daily discomfort, double lives, abuse and hatred. The photographs present a window into their world. This absorbing documentary explores that world's reality.

Zanele Muholi

Zanele Muholi was born in Umlazi, Durban, in 1972. Muholi completed an Advanced Photography course at the Market Photo Workshop in Newtown and held her first solo exhibition at the Johannesburg Art Gallery in 2004. They have worked as a community relations officer for the Forum for the Empowerment of Women (FEW), a black lesbian organization based in Gauteng, and as a photographer and reporter for Behind the Mask, an online magazine on lesbian and gay issues in Africa. Their work represents the black female body in a frank yet intimate way that challenges the history of the portrayal of black women’s bodies in documentary photography. Their solo exhibition Only Half the Picture, which showed at Michael Stevenson in March 2006, traveled to the Market Photo Workshop in Johannesburg and the Afrovibes Festival in Amsterdam. In 2008, Muholi had a solo show at Le Case d’Arte, Milan, and in 2009 they exhibited alongside Lucy Azubuike at the CCA Lagos, Nigeria. They were the recipient of the 2005 Tollman Award for the Visual Arts, the first BHP Billiton/Wits University Visual Arts Fellowship in 2006, and were the 2009 Ida Ely Rubin Artist-in-Residence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Muholi’s work has been included at numerous group exhibitions including the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, New York (2015); Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2016); High Museum of Art, Atlanta (2017); and Walther Collection Project Space, New York (2018). Photographs from Muholi’s Faces and Phases series were included in the São Paulo Biennial (2010), Documenta (2012), and the South African Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (2013). Muholi was shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize in 2015. They received an Infinity Award from the International Center of Photography in 2016, a Chevalier de Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2016, and an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society in 2018. Muholi lives and works in Johannesburg. Learn More