Zanele Muholi - Only half the picture

A fresh, percolated taste of reality — Nonkululeko Godana

Zanele Muholi is a photographer we cannot neatly classify, and one whose vision we would be foolish to ignore — Pumla Dineo Gqola

A photographer and an activist, Zanele Muholi offers us the chance to journey across our own boundaries — to think differently about blackness, female forms, skins, bodies and sexualities in a way that is unprecedented in South Africa. Her images offer frank and intimate portrayals of black lesbian lives, the scars of hate crimes, the bonds between lovers, the life lines of women living on the margins. Muholi's subjects are never silent or inactive in front of her lens, and never less than complex human beings.

About the author:

Zanele Muholi was born in Umlazi, Durban, in 1972, and lives in Johannesburg. She co-founded and works for the Forum for the Empowerment of Women (FEW) (www.few.org.za). She completed an Advanced Photography course at the Market Photo Workshop, Newtown in 2004.

Muholi's photographs have appeared in South African gay and feminist publications including Womyn, Exit and Agenda (issues 61 and 63); on Behind the Mask (www.mask.org.za) and GALA (Gay and Lesbian Archives) (www.gala.wits.ac.za) and on the covers of books including An ABC of LGBTI: A resource guide (published by the Joint Working Group, Johannesburg, 2005), Balancing Act: South African gay andlesbian youth speak out edited by Joanne Bloch and Karen Martin (GALA, Johannesburg, 2005), and Tommy Boys, Lesbian Men and Ancestral Wives edited by Ruth Morgan and Saskia Wieringa (GALA and Jacana, Johannesburg, 2005), among others.

In 2005, Muholi's film, Engraged by a picture, was screened at the Out in Africa gay and lesbian film festival.

She was awarded the Tollman Award and the LGBTI Arts and Culture Award in 2005.

Now available at leading bookstores countrywide and direct from STE Publishers.

Orders/Media Enquiries: contact Angela McClelland on +2711 484 7824 or angela@ste.co.za
www.ste.co.za