ManuchaMuizenbergCapeTown2010
Zanele Muholi Manucha Muizenberg, Cape Town, 2010, from the series Faces and Phases, since 2006.
Photo: © Zanele Muholi, courtesy of Stevenson, Cape Town/Johannesburg & Yancey Richardson, New York

Visual Activism

Zanele Muholi’s impressive photo series Faces and Phases, which she began in 2006, now comprises over 250 black-and-white portraits of black lesbians and trans people, in South Africa and elsewhere. Wanting to counteract her community’s absence from (art) history, Muholi documents individuals who together constitute a constantly evolving visual archive that tends to make representations of identity more complex, rather than circumscribe them.

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This article also appears in the issue 91 - LGBT+
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