Last week the world lost a great man, a great leader. A man who stood up for his ideals. A man who fought injustice with great perseverance. Nelson Mandela was locked up for 27 years so he could free others. Apartheid may be abolished but not everybody in South-Africa is treated equally yet. A lot of lesbians and transgenders fall victim to corrective rape. Some men want to ‘heal’ women by raping them. A lot of South-African lesbian women even get killed because they don’t have the ‘right’ sexual preference. Most of the sex offenders don’t even get prosecuted.
South-African photographer Zanele Muholi, who calls herself a visual activist, wants to fight these kind of hate crimes. In her project Faces and Phases she photographs South-African lesbians and transgenders from all over the country. She wants to tell the stories of these woman and their courageous battle for equality. That’s why she also made the documentary Difficult Love about her artworks. The young South-African artist has recently received the Prince Claus Award for her visual activism. Next summer her works will be exhibited at the BOZAR museum in Brussels. Check out some of her photographs below.
Into The Culture 