{"id":14232,"date":"2015-10-15T09:13:35","date_gmt":"2015-10-15T07:13:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.femininemoments.dk\/blog\/?p=14232"},"modified":"2026-01-12T11:05:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-12T09:05:07","slug":"zanele-muholis-transformations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.femininemoments.dk\/blog\/zanele-muholis-transformations\/","title":{"rendered":"Zanele Muholi\u2019s Transformations"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-14233\" src=\"http:\/\/www.femininemoments.dk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Somnyama_Ngonyama_02_ZaneleMuholi.jpg\" alt=\"Photo by Zanele Muholi\" width=\"570\" height=\"570\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.femininemoments.dk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Somnyama_Ngonyama_02_ZaneleMuholi.jpg 570w, https:\/\/www.femininemoments.dk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Somnyama_Ngonyama_02_ZaneleMuholi-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.femininemoments.dk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Somnyama_Ngonyama_02_ZaneleMuholi-300x300.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 570px) 100vw, 570px\" \/><br \/>\n<em>Look Again. Photograph from the series Somnyama Ngonyama. Credit: Zanele Muholi\/Yancey Richardson Gallery\/Stevenson Gallery.<\/em><\/p>\n<h2>Zanele Muholi featured in The New York Times Magazine<\/h2>\n<p><em>Zanele Muholi\u2019s Transformations &#8211; A photographer known for taking striking portraits of members of the black queer community in South Africa turns the camera on herself.<\/em><br \/>\nBy JENNA WORTHAM, The New York Times Magazine OCT. 8, 2015<\/p>\n<p>Jenna Wortham visited visual activist <a href=\"http:\/\/www.stevenson.info\/artists\/muholi.html\" target=\"_blank\">Zanele Muholi<\/a> in Syracuse, New York and saw how Zanele is working on a new art project. In the above mentioned article she writes about Zanele&#8217;s creative practice:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;She thinks of these self\u00adportraits as autobiographical. They explore the elements of her personality \u2014 female, African, gay \u2014 and where they blur together and pull apart. She wants to undo the damage of growing up in a society that drew its strength from demonizing blackness, which is part of the reason she drastically darkens her skin tone in the photographs. It is her most deliberate declaration that she is black and that she is beautiful.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018When I was young, I was told that I was ugly, and I had to grow up with a sense of ugliness and shame,\u2019 she says. \u2018And I had to overcome it, because nobody can love you more than you.\u2019 She titled the series \u2018Somnyama Ngonyama,\u2019 which means \u2018Hail the Dark Lioness.\u2019&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.femininemoments.dk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Somnyama_Ngonyama_01_ZaneleMuholi.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-14234\" src=\"http:\/\/www.femininemoments.dk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Somnyama_Ngonyama_01_ZaneleMuholi.jpg\" alt=\"Photo by Zanele Muholi\" width=\"570\" height=\"570\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.femininemoments.dk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Somnyama_Ngonyama_01_ZaneleMuholi.jpg 570w, https:\/\/www.femininemoments.dk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Somnyama_Ngonyama_01_ZaneleMuholi-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.femininemoments.dk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Somnyama_Ngonyama_01_ZaneleMuholi-300x300.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 570px) 100vw, 570px\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<em>Photograph from the series Somnyama Ngonyama. Credit: Zanele Muholi\/Yancey Richardson Gallery\/Stevenson Gallery.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Read the full article: <em>Zanele Muholi\u2019s Transformations &#8211; A photographer known for taking striking portraits of members of the black queer community in South Africa turns the camera on herself<\/em> by Jenna Wortham.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Look Again. Photograph from the series Somnyama Ngonyama. Credit: Zanele Muholi\/Yancey Richardson Gallery\/Stevenson Gallery. Zanele Muholi featured in The New York Times Magazine Zanele Muholi\u2019s Transformations &#8211; A photographer known for taking striking portraits of members of the black queer community in South Africa turns the camera on herself. By&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14233,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[405,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artist-showcases","category-photography"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.femininemoments.dk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.femininemoments.dk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.femininemoments.dk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.femininemoments.dk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.femininemoments.dk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14232"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.femininemoments.dk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14232\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29500,"href":"https:\/\/www.femininemoments.dk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14232\/revisions\/29500"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.femininemoments.dk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.femininemoments.dk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.femininemoments.dk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.femininemoments.dk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}