Artist, Zanele Muholi: My name is Zanele Muholi. I am a photographer and the author of Somnyama Ngonyama, a self-portraiture series featuring high-contrast black and white images.
I’ve photographed Black and queer trans people in South Africa in London, in LA, in Brazil, in Bordeaux, and Portugal, as well. All I’ve ever done was documented this world using photography to say that if you do not know of our existence, we insist that we present this existence.
I know that most photographers, they say, “I like to photograph other people. I don’t want to be in front of the camera. I prefer to be behind.” But then how will you know what people are going through if you don’t expose yourself as well? So I just thought, If I want to photograph other people, I should also be part of this.
I’m one of us who’s so much desperate for this image that I’ve never seen before and I had to create it. So now I cannot look at other people without looking at self; without sharing my own complexities, my own struggles.
Healing is a process, and it never ends, especially for most of us who come from spaces infested by hate and racism and queerphobia and xenophobia. This is the way in which I contribute towards a visual history of the world.