Face yourself: The many faces of Zanele Muholi
Her house has been broken into, her images stolen. But Zanele Muholi will not stop using photography to highlight massacres, homophobia, hate crimes and rape.
Muholi, who describes herself as a "visual activist", took a self-portrait each day for a year for her latest project, Somnyama Ngonyama.
One of eight children, she grew up in Durban. After a few jobs, she took a photography course and it changed everything. "I was frustrated. I was on the verge of suicide," she says. "I use art as my own means of articulation. When I really needed therapy and I wasn't willing to sit with a shrink, I started to take photographs."
Art with a mission
Attacks, murders and 'corrective' rapes of lesbians are a brutal reality. Muholi's project is vital — several of the women she has photographed have since been killed, such as Busi Sigasa, a writer and poet who inspired it..
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