Zanele Moholi - "We Don’t Document for Fun... I Have a Collective Calling"

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Jul 11, 2013
by Louise Hallman
Zanele Moholi - "We Don’t Document for Fun... I Have a Collective Calling"

Award-winning photographer Zanele Muholi talks about her drive to photo black South African lesbians

Zanele Muholi poses a question to panelists at the Salzburg Global session 'Power In Whose Palm? The Digital Democratization of Photography'

South Africa is the only Africa country where not only is homosexuality not illegal, same-sex couples can also marry and adopt children, and are legally protected under anti-discrimination legislation. But this masks the horrors faced by many lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered South Africans. Through the medium of photography, one South African “visual activist” aims to show the truth of what it is like to live as a black lesbian in the country.

“I’m a visual activist before I’m a photographer, before I’m an artist,” says the award winner photographer Zanele Muholi.

The 40-year-old was selected as a Fellow for the Salzburg Global session ‘Power in Whose Palm? The Digital Democratization of Photography’ in February; her focus on black lesbians and dedication to the visual documentation of her community led to her being invited back as a member of the faculty for the session ‘LGBT and Human Rights: New Challenges, Next Steps’.

Despite all the supposed legal protections the LGBT community receives in the increasingly prosperous southern African country, lesbians, especially black lesbians, are frequently subjected to “corrective rape” attacks, where often gangs of men pin down and sexually assault lesbians in attempts to “cure” them of their homosexuality. Some of these attacks have led to the death of their victims. As South Africa struggles to combat its high level of crime, these attacks often go unprosecuted.

Speaking to Salzburg Global after the Power of Photography session in February, Muholi explained why she believes photographing this marginalized group is important: “If I even talk about the work that I’m doing on black lesbians, I’m not doing it for myself. I’m doing it for the younger generation; I’m doing it for the older generation, who never, who were never even given the opportunity to open their mouths.”

Muholi has been widely acclaimed for her work. In March, Muholi was honored in London at Index on Censorship awards – which seek to “celebrate the fundamental right to write, blog, tweet, speak out, protest and create art and literature and music” – for her “courage and the powerful statements made by her work”.

Accepting the award, Muholi said she hopes that her work helps other lesbians in South Africa. “The minute you see likeness is when you realize that no matter what you're going through in your own life, you are not alone,” she said.

Capturing history

The black lesbian sees her work as part of a wider effort to document black history in the post-Apartheid country.

“The issue of black history is a very, very sensitive one, because you deal with a community that is ever degraded, if not excluded from mainstream spaces…

“In South Africa, my focus has ever been on black lesbians, on black gays, on black trans-men. And why black specifically is because as black people, they don’t have a tangible history that is captured by us on us,” Muholi explained.

“So my approach is that of an insider, and I know that it’s possible to do other races, but it’s easy for me to start with a community that I understand…and so doing it, unapologetically.

“For many times, we have people who write our history on our behalf as if we did not exist, so this is my time, this is my terms and it is possible, or it should be, for us to do it on our own terms, in a way we fully understand.

“We cannot always expect people to do things for us,” the photographer elaborated. “For the longest time, black history had been captured by the outsiders, as if we never existed. From our mothers to our fathers, to our great-grandfathers… I think one has to find ways to re-write the history, for our own great-grandchildren. For them to know that we were once here and for them to understand fully the resistance and other struggles, that we still encounter…now.”

The Salzburg Global session on photography heard from many photographers who have used photography as a means for activism. Bangladeshi photographer Shahidul Alam’s exhibition ‘Crossfire’ exposed the extrajudicial killings of the Rapid Action Battalion to a wider international audience. Despite the accolades he has received for his photography, Alam says he simply works with the medium best suited to social activism. If something better comes along, he explains, he’ll change his medium and tactics.

“Beyond me documenting in South Africa, the lessons and information I learned here, I can take back home and apply, so photography, films, audio-materials can be better used for advocacy work,” Muholi said on the last day of the session.

“Other people may have different notions of how they perceive their photos as art; they don’t understand how you could push one political agenda using the very same.”

Photography proves particularly persuasive in countries and communities where literacy is not yet high, said Muholi.

“You don’t need to speak any special language in order for others to understand fully what’s going on. If you see a dead man, that doesn’t matter what language. If you see a person in shackles, [language] doesn’t matter.”

Beyond posterity

So, when she takes her photographs, is she doing it for posterity, or is it part of an agenda, an activism for the current space?

“[My work] is beyond posterity,” said Muholi. “It’s for current reference, for use by scholars and other fanatics… We’re talking about the now, so it’s sort of like capturing the visual presence, which then becomes a visual history… To say, yes we are here.”

In addition to her photography, Muholi also blogs and is a prominent voice in a growing community of queer and queer-focused artists in South Africa. She sees the work of her own and that of the community as more than just art – it is a vital part of the activism needed to counter the extreme prejudice faced by the LGBT community in the country.

“We are dealing with human beings who are being violated and raped, simply because we express the sexuality we do. They’re at risk of either losing their lives, or being curatively raped, like how people assume, if you rape a lesbian, she’ll become a straight woman.”

When speaking with Muholi, her anger at the situation is glaringly apparent. As a member of the black lesbian community, these are issues that she feels personally; she is not some neutral observer as some photographers and photojournalists try to be. (This neutral stance was perhaps most notable in the late Kevin Carter’s Pulitzer prize-winning photograph of the starving Sudanese girl stalked by a waiting vulture.) Whilst at the seminar in Salzburg, Muholi received news from a friend in Cape Town that another black lesbian had been killed because of her sexuality. Muholi and her photography collective have been photographing and documenting the funerals of such victims.

“We don’t document for fun, or just because we have powers and cameras. With my team, I have a collective calling; we document all of these atrocities because we want the world to know that we have a situation at hand.”

As the Open Society Foundation recently wrote in their publication on South African artists using their work to tackle social injustice, “Through her work, she shines a spotlight on her community – forcing everyone to acknowledge that they are ‘normal’, that what they do is ‘beautiful’, that who they are is ‘human’ – just like everyone else.”

It is normality and acceptance, as well as an end to persecution that Muholi strives for.

Just as the oppressive regime of apartheid was ended in South Africa in 1994, Muholi hopes to see the end of the persecution of the LGBT community in her country, and believes photography can be a tactic in doing so, bringing the plight of her community to the attention of the wider national and international consciousness.

“We call upon those with powers to agitate with us, just like the people who worked with activists in South Africa to end apartheid and I think the same strategies could be used,” she said, angrily hopeful.

Salzburg Global's photography session was named “Power in Whose Palm?” Apt for Muholi, who is determined to ensure the camera in her hands and the photography she produces is indeed powerful.

See more of Zanele Muholi's work on her website