Zanele Muholi’s Transformations
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/11/magazine/zanele-muholis-transformations.html?smid=fb-share
http://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/10/11/magazine/11selfportrait_opener/11selfportrait_opener-superJumbo-v3.jpg 
http://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/10/11/magazine/11selfportrait_Muholi_ss-slide-GPCC/11selfportrait_Muholi_ss-slide-GPCC-jumbo-v3.jpg Self-portraiture is a departure for Muholi, who has devoted much of her career to a voluminous body of work called ‘‘Faces and Phases.’’ She spent the last decade training her camera on those around her, primarily black, gay communities in South Africa, both her own and those that overlap in ever-widening concentric circles. These portraits, which she still shoots, depict lesbians and transgender men dressed to the nines, gazing at the viewer with a sort of placid resolve. The photos leave you with the sense that these are people who simply want to be seen, to have their life entered into the record.
But Muholi has also transcended her activist roots, developing a following in the art world. She has a solo exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum this year, called ‘‘Isibonelo/Evidence,’’ her largest to date. Until now, Muholi’s focus has been directed outward — at her subjects, at South Africa — but rarely at herself.
‘‘When I was young, I was told that I was ugly, and I had to grow up with a sense of ugliness and shame,’’ she says. ‘‘And I had to overcome it, because nobody can love you more than you.’’ She titled the series ‘‘Somnyama Ngonyama,’’ which means ‘‘Hail the Dark Lioness.’’
Muholi told me she was trying to find her own language to articulate the long-lasting effects of the politics that have defined her life. She grew up in a culture steeped in rich, idiomatic expressions, and visually, her work echoes that tradition. Muholi is reaching deep into herself, sucking out the troubled history in her marrow. Her self-portraits explode stereotypes of African women while evoking them, implicating the viewers for summoning those clichés as they gaze upon her skin. What does it mean to see Muholi’s face surrounded by clothespins and see a headdress? Where have you seen these images before? And who took them? 
▻http://www.parisphoto.com/agenda/zanele-muholi-somnyama-ngonyama
