Photo: tate.org.ukTate Modern is putting on an exhibition of work by the acclaimed photographer and visual activist Zanele Muholi (they/them). For the last twenty years they have been documenting the lives of ordinary South Africans in the Black lesbian, gay, trans, queer and intersex communities.
Photo: Liam Man/tate.org.ukOn display will be over 260 photographs and sculptural works spanning the entirity of their career, from their early work in Only Half The Picture, in which they capture moments of love, intimacy and intense images of traumatic events, to In Faces And Phases, where the participants looks directly into the camera and challenge the viewer to hold their gaze.
Photo: Liam Man/tate.org.ukOther highlights include Brave Beauties and Being, a series of images that challenge stereotypes and taboos. Muholi also turns the camera on themself in a series of striking images that explore the themes of sexual politics, racism and Eurocentrism.
Many of the images are accompanyed by testimonies that reveal how people are still risking their lives everyday, just so they can live authentically in the face of oppression and discrimination.
What the critics say...
Evening Standard: ★★★★ "This is one of the greatest exercises in self-portraiture of this, or any, age"
