Zanele Muholi

Muholi Muholi, Parktown (2016)

Close Looking: Queer African Art and Belong

Visual description:

This work is a striking black-and-white photographic portrait of a person looking directly at the viewer. The lighting is intense and deliberate, making the face stand out with clarity and force. The direct gaze creates a feeling of confidence, seriousness, and self-possession.

The composition gives the figure a strong presence. They are centered and difficult to ignore, and the photograph’s scale and tonal contrast heighten that effect. The title of the larger series, Somnyama Ngonyama (Hail, the Dark Lioness), deepens this sense of power, making the portrait feel both personal and monumental.

Context:

This work belongs to Muholi’s larger series Somnyama Ngonyama (Hail, the Dark Lioness). Zanele Muholi, born in 1972 in Umlazi, South Africa, is one of the most important visual activists working today. Their practice has long centered Black LGBTQ+ lives in South Africa and challenged the conditions under which those lives are ignored, distorted, or erased.

Muholi has described their mission as an effort “to re-write a black queer and trans visual history of South Africa for the world to know of our resistance and existence at the height of hate crimes in SA and beyond.” This statement is essential to understanding the work. These self-portraits are not only images of the self. They are interventions into how Blackness, queerness, and visibility are represented.

Interpretation:

One of the most powerful aspects of the work is the way it reclaims representation. For a long time, Black bodies were photographed by colonizers, scientists, and outsiders who used images to categorize and subordinate people. Muholi reverses that dynamic by taking control of the camera and of the image. The portrait becomes an assertion: I decide how I am seen.

The treatment of skin tone is central. Muholi often deepens the darkness of their skin in these self-portraits, insisting that Blackness be seen not as something to soften or minimize, but as something proud, deliberate, and powerful. In that sense, the image resists beauty standards that privilege lighter skin and turns Blackness itself into a site of celebration and defiance.

Muholi also frequently incorporates everyday objects associated with labor, especially domestic work. These materials can become a kind of armor or regalia, transforming what has often been used to diminish Black people into something forceful and dignified. This connection is especially meaningful given that Muholi’s mother worked as a domestic laborer, and many of these self-portraits honor her spirit.

The image also speaks to the necessity of self-documentation. Muholi spent many years photographing other members of Black LGBTQ+ communities in South Africa. In turning the camera toward themself, they insist that their own body, history, and presence also belong in the archive.

Reflect and Explore

• What catches your attention first in this portrait? How does Muholi’s gaze shape your experience of the image?

• Why do you think Muholi chose black and white for this work? How might the image feel different in color?

• Look closely at what Muholi is wearing. Do any of the materials feel familiar? Does recognizing them change the way you read the portrait?

• What do you think stays with a viewer after seeing this work? What kind of memory or feeling does Muholi want to leave behind?

  
  

Learn More

Artist & Primary Sources

• Stevenson Gallery — Zanele Muholi

• Autograph — Zanele Muholi: Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness

  
  

Further Resources

• Harvard Alain Locke Gallery — Somnyama Ngonyama

• Seattle Art Museum — Zanele Muholi: Somnyama Ngonyama

• Spelman College Museum of Fine Art — Zanele Muholi: Somnyama Ngonyama

• 1854 Photography — Zanele Muholi’s Somnyama Ngonyama

  
  

Contextual Reading

• Zanele Muholi, Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness (Aperture, 2018)

• Zanele Muholi, Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness, Volume II (Aperture, 2024)

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Leilah Babirye Nansamba II queer African art