Zanele Muholi approaches the craft of photography with a fervent political mission. As an educator, she is relentlessly dedicated to mentoring and empowering a new generation of storytellers. Throughout the past decade, the South African photographer has created a tender and intimate archive of portraits of black lesbian and transgender communities living in South Africa for her critically acclaimed series Faces and Phases. For her most recent body of work, Somnyama Ngonyama (Hail, the Dark Lioness), Muholi places herself in front of the camera in a self-portraiture series that responds to the entanglement of injustice and blackness. Above all, Muholi’s images challenge us to renegotiate the very act of looking and to consider its potential as a radical act.

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