muholi fights women issues through the lens

By Nthateng Mhlambiso (BTM Senior Reporter)

November 10, 2006: She doesn’t see herself as an icon but those who had a glimpse of her work can confirm that Zanele Muholi is a living legend.

A proudly South African lesbian as she attests, Muholi recently exhibited her thought-provoking photography works throughout the world. And last year for the same work, she received a Tollman award worth R100 000, which is an annual award for young South African artists with exceptional abilities.

As a visual artist, she focuses on issues of rape, poverty, violence and HIV and Aids among young African lesbians. She sometimes captures  tortured bodies of women using her still camera.

In fact she developed a penchant for camera while growing up in the then Natal homeland when she realized that all photographers were men. “I thought to myself that if a man can be a photographer, so can a woman, and that is where my love for photography started”, asserted Muholi.

About her schooling, she says; “I am a product of Bantu education.” Financial strains and lack of opportunities to further her studies led Muholi ending up working as hairdresser.

“I survived by doing people’s hair. Life was hard but I had concluded that I was not going back home without a tangible career”, she insisted. Her life changed when she met Bart Luirink – founder of Behind the Mask (BTM), who offered her a job as a photographer – which was her dream job in early 2000.

The thirty four-year-old Muholi says capturing a picture “is not about beauty, but about issues that need to be discussed and dealt with – such as sexuality, illiteracy, poverty, HIV and Aids.”

With her photography skills gained from the Market Photo Workshop in Newtown, she successfully flaunted her work at the Johannesburg Art Gallery in 2004.

Her ambition was realized when she became part of the establishment of Forum for the Empowerment of Women (FEW), which she later worked for as its Community Relations Officer.

Currently at FEW, Muholi is teaching visual literacy and photography skills.

She has contributed to a number of books with her photography such as Tommy Boys, Lesbian men and Ancestral wives, Gender of psychology, Balancing Act, Y Magazine, Elle Décor, Vitamin PH just to mention a few.

Not long ago she compiled her own photography book entitled Only Half a picture, which was exhibited at the Market Theatre this year.

Her latest group exhibitions this year include Erase me from who I am held at Canary Island, Second to None and Subject to Change both held at the South African National Gallery in Cape Town.

This week Muholi participates in an exhibition called Women in Photography that started on 8 November and will run until 28 February 2007.

When asked about her inspiration to this work, she said; “I am inspired by a lot of women, I am a go-getter and I work for what I want. I ask for what I don’t have and this is the lesson I learnt from my mother.”

Through this photography work and activism, Muholi travelled countries such as Amsterdam, Venezuela and San Francisco.

Explaining what she likes so much about photography she said; “There are things that I can talk about but that I can not capture. There are things that are (sic) hard to access but possible to capture, that is what I do.”

She continues that; “Visualizing is now and what you see now might be different tomorrow. I capture that difference.”

Even though Muholi is passionate about her photography, she concedes that it has its downside. “Photography is an expensive hobby. It needs focus, concentration and it is not always easy to be an employee”, she concluded.