I want to tell you about Zanelli.
She's a South African activist using photography
to challenge a nation that has seen many challenges.
This is personal for her.
It's not just a project or a story.
This is her life.
And through her work, documenting the lives and deaths
of South Africa's queer culture,
she's making a difference, a record, a statement.
As her photographs not only document community,
they build it and give it voice, identity, and empower it.
Zanelli offers testimony in the great tradition
of social documentarians, photographers committed
to civil rights and human rights.
From David Goldblatt to Donna Ferrado, brave individuals
who look through that viewfinder hoping
to change a world and did.
There's a special star that shines every evening in your eyes.
A special star that shines is going to hit a lullaby.
Special, go and give it a go, Vaseline.
Good.
I'm Zanelli Holi, reporting live from South Africa.
I'm a visual activist.
I take photographs.
The kind of work that I do is on queer politics,
gender politics, politics of race.
I'm fascinated by LGBTI individuals in different spaces.
I've learned how beautiful this place is,
how important our lives are, and why we should preserve
a history about our own people, about us.
Very, very interesting township.
I've done a lot of shots here.
I shot the first gay wedding here in 2002.
I don't even know that there are lesbians who own dogs.
This is for the first time that I know someone.
And we are pulling the top.
Aye!
The light is good here.
Yeah.
I'm going to shoot a polar portrait of Dumi in Mohawkila.
I used to be a hairstylist.
Yeah.
We had a life before we came out.
Look at that.
Somebody asked me how influential it
might be when it comes to this portrait.
And I said to people, I just want people to look good.
I really want people to be fresh.
We're going to the Popo Pride.
When I read the address, we're connected by photography
that I was doing for a shoot here in Guatema.
And I thought that she was just a very nice person
to be in the Faces and Faces series that I'm working on.
You have a young generation that is growing up now
who doesn't share maybe the same commonalities,
like lesbians who were out there in the 90s or late 80s
before South Africa gained independence.
The young lesbians now, they are socialites
connected by the social media and all of that.
And they free when it comes to photographs, et cetera,
et cetera.
I know maybe some people get surprised
when you start photographing this.
I was surprised, but the first time it was fun.
I had fun, and I didn't know that I'm photogenic.
So since then, I like to take myself pictures.
So this is three years later.
We are in the same township.
And the township is so popular with gay lives.
There are a lot of gay people in Guatema.
And also, it has since become notorious for hate crimes,
because in 2008, a number of lesbians
was brutally murdered here.
2012 was one of the most painful years in our history.
We lost a lot of members of our communities.
And hate crimes specifically, curative rapes and lesbian murders
became one of the brutality that is
stained in our brains forever.
We live in fear.
That happened to bind us.
Hate crimes have become a binding factor for the LGBTI communities.
We come together to either give support
or to confirm that somebody has been killed.
Then that person becomes a statistic.
Another case, Namba, becomes part of our history.
And what are we doing about it?
Do we always go and attend funerals?
And then after funerals, you go home,
you wait for another funeral?
What?
You have to document.
You are forced to document.
Transformation.
I don't want to do it.
Half a second.
Transformation by Zanela Muholi.
By you, this is your aid.
I'm using visuals as a way of creating awareness.
Capturing the moments, those truths and realities
that world will learn about our cultures.
I could give you something tangible and say, feel it.
This is it.
See, you invited to be in that space,
even though you were not there.
Please put it in and out.
We're shooting faces and faces, not fashion.
Mm.
Ah.
Yeah.
If there is the other side of me when I perform,
there is the other side of me when I'm me.
How will you engage with me?
You look so gay yet.
Actually, you look like a drag queen.
Most of the time, I work with people that I know.
They're no strangers to me.
I call the people who are in my photographs participants,
because you partake in a project that
will inform many audiences.
And when you come to these, there was danger of teaching.
Any person who's interested in learning
is welcome to learn how to take photographs.
I provide cameras as long as a person will
be able to document what will then become a contribution
to what's in Ganyoso, which is the organization that I formed.
One cannot do these major projects alone, which
is why I invited people to come on board and work with me.
And it means that it's not lonely anymore.
Take five.
I started this project calling Ganyoso
to ensure that people who are featuring in my photographs
get a platform to share their own lives and work.
People get to read about sex.
People get to read about anything
that they will never, in as much as South Africa
is so democratic, they'll never see that kind of text
in the mainstream media.
Most of the team members, we are Black Lispians.
It's gratu.
Hello.
People occupy different positions
within the Ganyoso crew.
Bongi is a documenter.
And Lirata is a graduate.
She's a journalist.
And we just posted a new story on Pepsmere
that she wrote this morning.
Now I had to beg Lirata to cut her hair.
And look how beautiful this person is.
It is Lirata's portrait in 2010.
So we're going to have a nice follow-up shot.
I train and I will continue to train with or without funding.
Because if I wait for someone to validate my existence,
it will mean that I'm shortchanging myself.
Recently, we had to decide whether we buy a fridge
where we live or we buy a new lens.
So we sleep on the floor.
It's nice documenting with my crew.
It's fabulous.
I love the people that I work with.
A lot of people I reckon with Pepsmere.
For, you know, Lispia, you know, even Poochwoman.
It's something that's like, if I don't know what I can say, taboo.
But I don't know. You said you need me to revise it.
No, you have to do patu.
Patu, what's patu about?
I feel like it's European the most.
I don't think that you gave it your all,
like how you write when you tackle the issues of hate crimes.
And what would you like to read about in the mainstream?
You know, even read, even when seeing, you know,
I'd like to see an advert of a family
where it's the mother and the mother and the baby,
you know, in the fighting gems in the household.
It shouldn't only be about the violence and the homophobia.
We want to bring about changing spaces that are queerphobic.
We still have religious leaders who want to use homosexuality
as scapegoat for their own hate.
Instead of dealing with poverty,
instead of dealing with the corrupted systems
that we find ourselves in,
and that's what leads to many hate crimes.
See where this white conglomerate is?
It's where Ntolunokwaza was found.
Ntolunokwaza is a victim of hate crime
who was brutally murdered.
A head was crushed with a big stone.
Her teeth were all over the place.
Ntolunokwaza's children are not the first
to be offended by hate crimes.
What will people say to the children
what happened to their mothers?
Ntolunokwaza's case is still outstanding.
I don't know how far do they investigate these cases.
We all document that Lisbian funeral.
Every person who has a cell phone with a camera,
it doesn't matter what quality.
And all of us come together in one space
and download and share.
You make that document viral.
You want to say to our governments,
this is what I'm talking about
when I talk of a Lisbian funeral.
It's my wish that we could find positive Lisbian icons
on Wikipedia as well,
other than to always find brutal murders.
You Google black Lisbians in South Africa,
you'll see what you see there.
There's nothing that focuses on same-sex love
versus these hate crimes.
When do we start talking about intimacy?
I produce pictures that are intimate
because I'm an intimate being.
This intimacy that disrupts the perpetrator
leads to us being killed.
It starts by the same-sex love
that is disorganizing the mindset of the homophobe.
More education is needed.
Mainstream communities need to come on board
and help us and ensure that there's no other hate crime.
Projecting positivity sometimes can lead to the change.
Projecting brutality and violations
could lead to further violence.
So I think that we need to find a balance
in which we project these realities.
Let's go to the beach, let's go get away.
Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.
Hello, beauty.
Anganiso is a blimpo-pride 2013.
I came with Anganiso crew last night.
Once we're done here, we're gonna put it up on social networks
to make sure that people might not be here
and understand what is taking place and get the visuals.
People think that pink cities are Cape Town,
Deben and Johannesburg.
People cannot even imagine that there's blimpo-pride.
It's very important for us to say that LGBTI individuals
are all over any space as possible.
So we're here to celebrate with the people of this province.
It's about saying I want to be counted in South African history.
Claiming my full citizenship,
it means that I have to write that part of history.
Let's have a DJ, let's have the music there.
MUSIC
It's really exciting for me to be here in this great theatre,
this great festival, talking to you.
I had my first proper conversation with you this morning,
and that was a wonderful experience.
As Vince mentioned, I have a background myself
in representational activism in the lesbian and gay field.
And there's something, I mean,
Britain in the early 1980s was a very different place
than the world now, than South Africa now.
I'm not trying to compare experiences,
but there's one thing that wouldn't have happened.
The gay scene at the time,
a gay white boy wouldn't be allowed to question a black lesbian.
That's just kind of the hierarchy of things.
But you're very comfortable in all, everywhere.
LAUGHS
Maybe, but the commonality between us is love.
With a white gay man, a black lesbian in one space,
we just love who we love, and share whatever with the public.
You said something interesting this morning,
which is like, I'm a gay man.
I mean, like, I'm like a gay man.
I've got the, you've got the hoodspot of a gay man.
I mean, what was that about?
I like the edge and how easy going gay men,
when they cruise, they do their thing.
And I always say to my friends, whenever I, when I come back
in my next life, I'll come out of the gay man.
LAUGHS
So, the pictures are rolling, we're going to chat.
Sometimes we'll stop on a particular picture.
I mean, tell us about some of the pictures that we're looking at.
Um, mostly, almost of the time,
I work with people that I know, people that I'm comfortable with.
I don't work with models, because I can't afford to pay them.
And I don't work with subjects.
I just discovered three S's, like the studio, the seat and the subject.
Those three S's don't work for me.
So, the images that you see are of people that I love, dearly,
and people that I've seen for the longest time progress, you know?
Like the person who's on screen right now is Christina Mavoma.
She's one of the few trans women that have been following
and documenting over a period of time.
The project is one of representing a community,
your community, a community beyond yourself.
I mean, the mission is to change South Africa and to change Africa.
I mean, is that fair?
Yeah, it's fair, because we are at a period in our lives
where there is high level of homophobia in different African parts.
A lot of LGBTI individuals who happen to be like you and I,
they encounter a lot of hate crime, hate speech from the leaders
that's supposed to support them and respect them.
And a lot of people have been killed.
A lot of people have been displaced simply because of who they are.
We know of the anti-homosexuality bill that was passed in Nigeria.
And before Nigeria, there was anti-homosexuality bill
that affected Ugandans.
And it meant that a lot of Ugandan LGBTI people
had to leave the country and seek refuge in different places abroad.
So what I'm trying to do here is to bring about a kind of tool
in which we speak on these atrocities and this kind of displacement
and also to change how historical documents,
mainstream spaces are tuned.
Because when you come out in any space,
it's like you have to negotiate a space and say,
hello, hello, well done here.
And then people are not willing to listen.
And then it means that a lot of our people have to deal with
the most queer-phobic and homophobic spaces at workplace,
at schools, at churches, and in different public spaces.
It's like when you see two gay men kissing, it becomes such a stare.
When you see Lisbian kissing, it's like, oh my God, what's going on?
And people start praying for you as if there's something wrong
that you have done.
So I just want to change visual history
in ways that it's never been done in Africa.
I told myself that I need to set a precedent
in which even the person who is not conceived right now
get an opportunity to see a gay grandfather with pride,
to see a gay grandmother or a Lisbian grandmother with pride.
I see us in space where we have our names, you know?
Become those street names of important people
who have made a difference in our communities,
beyond just gay pride, where we have the flair and the feathers
and rainbow.
I just need to make sure that we are full-time in space
without being apologetic about it.
Your work is being seen in the international museum and art world.
You're becoming quite well known as a figure
and also because of the recent book that was published.
How is your work being distributed and seen in Africa,
and particularly Uganda and Nigeria, you just mentioned?
I've never shown in many countries in Africa.
I have worked in places like Uganda,
documenting activists who some of them are featuring in phases
and phases.
I've worked in Butohana, I've worked in Malawi.
There's a queer project that we worked on in Malawi.
It's called Queer Malawi, which was such a success.
There are different places where I get to share my work,
but showcasing and also being in museums in Africa.
I mean, we don't have many museums like here.
But presumably through social media and other channels,
you are known and people are following you in those other countries.
I mean, you have that reputation there at this point.
We try, and I have to be honest, that I don't do it alone.
I have a lot of young individuals and my friends
who are giving me support and some of them are here in the audience tonight.
And I don't work alone.
I won't even claim to be working alone.
And without my friend's support and also the participants
who are in my photographs, it would be impossible
to distribute.
So I rely on people that I trust.
And each time we do it, we need to make sure that people's safety is important.
Can we stop at this picture?
Who's that lying on top of you?
Is that you? No, is that you?
The bottom is me.
But I'm not really the bottom in real life.
And then the person who's on top of me is Caitlyn.
And the picture is called Caitlyn and I.
And it was produced in 2009 when I had a residence at MIT.
She's an artist and a graduate.
She was at MIT at the time.
She was doing her own project for a thesis
and obviously wanted us to collaborate.
I needed something.
She needed something.
We had to do something.
That's how we ended up in that position.
By the way, it's pretty clear that she's lying on top,
that you're not the bottom.
In reality, these are the dynamics and politics
of being in interracial relationships
where sometimes somebody dominates the relationship.
When this image was taken, I was in an interracial relationship.
And there are other photos that were produced after this
or as part of this.
And it's related on these dynamics.
And there's not much of the interracial relationships
that we have or that we find ourselves in that is much
written about, especially in the African context.
South Africa, where people of mixed race
would not be allowed to marry.
And that was under Immortality Act of 1957 or before then.
So I was thinking of how this relationship would
have been perceived problematic if it was transparent
or in the open at all.
So this is just South Africa assuming
that we are not in America because it's easier to do this here.
So I was thinking of if this image was
circulated in South Africa and how
it would have put so many people's lives at risk.
But then it's about the mixed relationships.
South Africa, being a space with four races,
well, we're not scared to talk about the dynamics of race
where you think of white people, Indian people, colored people,
and black people who are then placed at the bottom.
So the image was meant to bring about or to create
a new dialogue of something that existed in heterosexual lives.
And you change it to make yourself comfortable.
I mean, it's more political than it is about the intimate.
You talked about intimacy in the film
and how important representing intimacy,
or an intimate being is.
I mean, maybe it's both, both a political statement
or a political act to make the picture
and a representation of intimacy.
Yeah, in a way, in a way.
If she was mine, I would have said so.
But she doesn't make a film.
OK.
But tell us about your, you can continue with the pictures,
but tell us about your photographic practice.
You talk about participants rather than subjects.
You talk about visuals rather than photographs or pictures
the way most of the photo can be seen.
You've got a very distinct way of thinking about your relationships,
your subject, what the pictures are that go out into the world.
I think as a person who takes photographs
or who produce photographs, I don't like the distance.
The minute we say subject, it's like you're not allowed
to connect with a person that you photograph.
Sometimes you don't even need to know that person.
So I just made sure that I connect and try to relate
with people that I photograph in my work by all means,
because those are the people who make it possible for me
to be seated in this space.
Those are the people who made it possible for me to have work
at the Freedom Park, so they can't be subject.
So I try by all means to bring the people as my own family.
This is my LGBTI family, and I'm more connected to them
than my bio-family.
So it's that connection that met us to me the most.
The relationship, because I look at photography
and the practice more of a relationship than the distance
that sometimes the photographers create between themselves
and what they call subjects.
Presumably, you're also, I mean, as with the participant
you were working with that we saw in the film,
you're also empowering people to realise themselves visually,
if you know what I mean, to make their visual presence felt.
So it is an empowerment practice too.
Is that fair?
Yeah, it's fair, and it's very, very important,
because we're talking of a history.
We're all trying to document,
we all try to create a history that we never had,
and also we're all trying to form a foundation
that will speak to many people who will come after us.
So in that way, people need to be empowered.
People, we have to explain what's going on
and what's going to happen after.
So we can't just leave things loose,
assuming that people will understand.
It's complicated at times because some people don't get it.
I won't even lie to you.
Some people just don't get it.
But then, bit by bit and through time,
people get the message as you move along.
Yeah.
So why do you talk about visuals?
That's quite an unusual choice of words
to talk about your work as visuals.
I think the minute I say visual or visuals
and visualizing visualization, it penetrates here.
Whereas if it's a photograph, it's light,
it doesn't quite get there.
And I feel that I'm doing something if I'm into it,
because then it's a process.
You have to use your six senses before you even take a photo.
And when you document or take that particular visual,
there's that connectedness that exists
between the two beings who are engaging to come up
with the final product, that final something that speaks.
Because you're really co-author of these pictures
in a very distinct way.
So tell us about how the print fits into this.
I mean, you're represented by at least one gallery
that I know of.
I'm sure some others around the world.
How do you feel about the print as an object?
Before it becomes the print, I work
with a good friend who lives in New York
and also tell her where her name is Ellen.
She's here in the audience.
She's the one that decides on what is print or what's not.
And I don't understand mainly these things.
I'm still learning after 10 years.
I don't like to think about subjects and objects.
But for survival, we end up getting into that space.
And also to be grateful to the galleries that represent us
and many of us because it's hard to get access to resources
to continue with the project that we produce.
Same for all the other photographers in the room
at some level, I think.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So to be represented or to work with gallery,
some way somehow benefits the artist.
Because then, especially when you do queer work like mine,
I don't have energy to be writing proposals,
convincing homophobes to give me money to produce.
I don't.
And I don't even know how to write proposals
because I just reached that space to say, this is work.
Whoever that is willing to support me will be working with me
and working with many other people.
And that person need to understand the importance
of our history, that person becoming on board as an ally,
also as a person who intervenes, that intervention.
So it goes beyond just objects.
All collecting involves an element
of I support your action.
It's a kind of an act of identification.
Of course, the object itself has to be.
That's why you have to find a new way
to do away with objects.
Because like we're talking about plastics,
not about realities.
Yes.
We talk about something that is far distant.
Maybe there is another way that could place that
so that whoever that collects, and also for two lovers,
to know that the images are not just objects.
They're beyond that.
And I don't have the way for it.
Like how I remove the subject and came up with participant.
Maybe I'll have to find a new word.
A new word for print.
No, for object.
OK.
Yeah.
So apart from the money, which is obviously everybody gets that,
we'll sell something in order to do the work we want.
How does being a figure, how does having a show
in the Brooklyn Art Museum help your mission in Africa?
OK.
We are at Brooklyn Museum currently until November 1.
It's, again, it's not about me.
Having that work there means that that space will open up
for many gay people from Africa.
I don't know if the images that are there
happen to be of a black lesbian from Africa.
And yet there were many who were there before me,
who never had an opportunity to be there.
So I think, in a way, it is meant to pave the way
for many Africans who will come after me, like I said,
those who are still to be born, et cetera, et cetera.
It means a lot, and it's a very important space,
especially to be placed next to that dinner party.
So we're all having a party.
Yeah.
And also it brings about a new kind of dialogue
in which I share with the people back at home
the meaning and the politics of being in such spaces
and also the importance of being in such spaces
and how we could bring our activism in spaces
that are impossible.
Because nobody could imagine how visual activism sits
in museums and also galleries without thinking of how we
speak to the non-converted.
It's one thing we speak at each other as gay people,
but we need the mainstream in order to survive and also
to educate them, not to be tolerated,
to educate them about how we live our lives,
to demand respect and recognition.
So I'm happy that we are there for once in history
that one get that kind of recognition and respect
and have that work in that space where many people get
to be educated about African queer politics.
Or I can't say every person who goes to the show is gay,
but then there are children who go to that space
and that space is used as an educational platform for many.
So I'm happy that people who are from the area
get to see themselves through faces and phases,
get to question, and they get to read
about what is going on beyond their own personal zones.
We're looking at faces and phases now.
I'm going to ask you about that.
But just before we do that, I mean,
you're here at the kind of heart of the photo community
in the USA, but it's really a very much a global community,
I think, and it's a very distinct thing
where people have a very distinct identification with it.
Are you part of the photo community?
Do you see yourself as part of the photo community?
Are you, is this your community,
your other community that you're with now?
It's been exciting to see work that I've never seen before.
And also to be in a kind of space
where people love photographs, you know.
I came here when they spoke the other night
and people were really fascinated.
The house was full and I was thinking,
for once I get to feel something that other people have felt.
Can we make you a member of this community too?
Yeah!
Yeah!
I think that just happened.
No, I'm here.
I'm here.
When will my gold card be delivered at the hotel?
I'm here.
I'm with you.
Yes.
So tell us about the Faces and Phases project.
Faces and Phases is a lifetime project
and I started working on this project in 2006
and next year will mark ten years
since I started working on this patiently
and it features mostly young activists
and older activists who are doing work and whose lives,
you know, are at risk in many ways in South Africa
and beyond South African borders.
And how it came about.
I lost a friend in 2007 in March.
She was a survivor of hate crime.
She encountered three incidents of hate crime,
curative rape and she ended up being HIV positive
and she succumbed to complications in 2006 and 2007
and she passed in March and she was only 25 years old.
So that broke my heart, you know,
going through that period we attended the funeral
and the resistance from family, you know,
because we didn't need to speak about HIV, et cetera, et cetera.
So I was really heartbroken.
And then I thought to myself that, you know,
when portraits are part of our obituaries programs,
if at all, you know, you look at your newspaper,
you see the obituary section with portraits
and it means that portraiture becomes that important
and that important document in which we refer to something.
So we lost my friend and then I look at the community around me,
how important it was who have portraits of each person taken.
Also at the same time I was more into couples
and then the issue with the couples where people break up
and then it means you can't hear the picture and say,
take your piece and so on and so on
because other people move on with their lives,
others do with us, some they are straight now,
which is okay with me.
But you can't keep the other piece
because then it doesn't become a complete picture, you know?
So then I thought it was safer and easier
to do these single portraits.
Even though somebody was partnered,
it meant that at least somebody had her own life,
she was her own person or he was her own person,
et cetera, et cetera.
So this then becomes my lifetime project
that I told myself that as long as I leave,
I'll have to go back to some of the people and do follow-ups.
But as the people are participating.
That's the phases, is it?
It's the transitional process.
Yeah, the progress also.
And it means that people who are in the series
get to write their own life stories.
So when you look at each and every phase,
you should think of that person's biography
and that person's life story.
To have this image beyond just the framed image on the wall,
but to note that this person is connected
to so many other individuals in space.
It's like you and I married, maybe.
Not that it's gonna happen.
Maybe, just cancer, don't worry about it.
So are you and me, you have your 10 friends,
I have my 20 friends, and then those 20 friends
become members of the community.
So we document, you know, annually.
Yeah, like the person on screen now is Lirato.
The image was taken in 2010.
She's the coordinator of the project.
So then whatever change that is made along the way,
we also work together and somebody has to move on.
So that picture before this one was 2010.
This picture is 2013.
I've done here 2014.
Ellen is busy fixing 2014, 2015.
And we grow up together in that way.
Yeah, so that's what I wish to do with everybody as well.
So that if we don't make it tomorrow,
at least people have something tangible
that they could refer our lives in
and then learn or read more about our lives
beyond just the images of just black lesbians.
A lot of people are talented young individuals
and the people who are professionals in their own right.
So I just happen to do my part.
They also have their own lives
in which they contribute to our larger society.
How does the, I mean, most of your participants
are based in South Africa, correct?
I mean, it's a few from other countries.
How are these pictures circulated at home in South Africa?
Okay.
Right now, Faces and Faces book, which is 2006 to 2014,
we have exhibitions which are massive like here.
When I have an exhibition, I open up the gallery spaces
and I paint the white walls black.
The people come in space and then we celebrate ourselves.
That's what I do.
You know, I'm doing that whole notion
of who comes to the gallery space,
who has the right to be at a museum, et cetera, et cetera.
So distribution depends on those who are featuring in it.
There is an image that I like that then becomes part of the series
and there's an image that I give it to the person
who is in the images.
So you say maybe in an hour's time we take maybe 10 shots
and then I'm only looking for that one,
that one image that speaks to me.
And then I sometimes give the rest to the participants.
Before the show is on, like for the book, for instance,
we have 250 portraits and the aim is to give every participant
her own copy or his own copy.
Of the book.
Of the book.
So like how you buy the book here,
the participants have their own copy that they get for free.
Did that happen?
Yes.
We haven't done all the 250, but bit by bit we are sharing.
And then I also requested my friends and individuals who care
about the image and who are into visual anthropologies,
et cetera, to write reviews.
That's another form of distribution
because this book is used mainly for education.
Can we stop on this picture a minute
because you were telling me, I'm sorry,
I forget their name, this person's story.
OK.
This is Lungi Rejlada.
She's born in 1986.
She's from Davidson, which is one of the townships
in the east of Joanna Speck.
She was at the funeral there.
Oh, right.
Yeah, the person was singing at the funeral.
I met her in 2010 and I took this image in 2011 December
during the 16 days of activism month.
It was towards the end of 16 days.
And I listened, which is what we need to do as photographers,
to listen to the people that we photograph sometimes
and do not rush to take images.
So she told a story and I asked her to write a story
then for me to tell her story.
So she wrote about how she was raped by a person
that they, when the family buried her aunt.
And it was on Valentine's Day 2010.
She and a friend were raped at the same time
by a guy from neighborhood who knew that she was a lesbian.
And later on, she discovered that she was HIV positive.
And the story is called, I'm not a victim, I'm a victor.
And it's on Enganyi's block where she's
telling about how she had to deal with the police
to ensure that the perpetrator was arrested.
So we're dealing with young, brave activists
who want to change the system and also want to speak out
of all of these atrocities and also challenges
that we are facing in our communities.
So she's just a young South African
whose maybe future is uncertain due to that incident
that disorganized their life.
Is the hate crime situation getting worse?
Are more hate crimes happening, or is it?
There's quite a number of brutal murders
that have taken place over the past few months,
counting a case that happened last September
and also another incident where a young lesbian was brutally
murdered in Pretoria in Hamascar, which is part of how she
was in her eighties and was killed around the corner
from her neighborhood.
So the hate crimes, worse does not mean 10.
Just one case is worse than anything else.
The fact that a young person's life or a human being's life,
especially the person if he's known to be queer
and that person's life is cut short due to your sexuality
and gender expression is wrong.
So I'll say it worse if any human being's life is claimed
or if that person's life is violated.
So there's quite a number of cases that make things worse
because we're dealing with families here who are losing
their children simply because of sexuality and gender
expression.
We're losing colleagues at workplace.
We're losing classmates.
We're losing our friends.
We're losing our lovers.
We're losing human beings that we love dearly
because of homophobes in space and also the ticketed leaders.
So it's been worse because a lot of young stars
have been killed.
But do you personally have reason for optimism?
I mean, you feel, I mean, there's an optimism
that you get from your pictures about building
a new society in a way.
Do you feel personally optimistic about the future?
I'm positive about the future.
You know, I am born in South Africa at the height of apartheid.
Racism claimed a lot of people's life.
It's still happening here in the US.
It will end one day.
But then by all the challenges that we're facing
doesn't mean that we need to slow down.
We cannot afford to be delayed in any ways.
But it means that we have to continue
to live under those heavy circumstances.
So I have hope that hate crime will end just
like how apartheid ended in South Africa.
Woo.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
Thank you.
So, I mean, you've got such a articulate philosophy
of your practice, of your approach.
What were your influences?
What did you grow up on?
Where were your photographic influences?
Who taught you?
I came out late.
Not as a lesbian.
I came out in the scene very late.
There are so many people that I like and whose lives met us.
To me, the most of my inspiration happened to be my mother.
And, unfortunately, she's no longer here,
but she's here with us tonight, for sure.
She passed in 2009.
I grew up from a very big family.
My mom works as a domestic worker.
And there is a project in which I am my mother, which
is also visual.
And I like to tell the story of my mom,
a person that is me, that is no longer there, who
worked, et cetera, et cetera.
So that was the person who pushed something.
Because then I questioned a lot of things around me
to say, how are other things happening?
How are we poor?
How did we end up being 8, 9, 10 in a small forum house?
The poor education that I consumed as a kid,
and of which I like to project that and share with the viewer
the kind of system that really placed us differently.
And racial politics, gender politics, all of these things
are part of my identities, et cetera, et cetera.
But there's a woman that I like so much.
Her name is Cindy Wemagwon.
She's a South African writer.
She's a mother.
I think she's 70 now.
I like her work.
And she did a small book called Please Take Photographs.
She lives in Cape Town.
I like her work.
It just speaks to me.
It just brings all those layers.
And every text to me that I read of her, I want to shoot.
Because she confirms that kind of possibilities in life,
et cetera, et cetera.
And then when I started moving around the queer circles,
photo spaces, I discovered Rotimi Fane Gaiote,
who is one of the photographers who was commissioned as part
of the bodies of experience that's
visionated in London.
I love Rotimi.
I like the fact that a black gay man took initiative
at a period when it was impossible for people to do it.
Or that's Sika, by the way.
The person on the right, one of the young stars
will enter these beauty pageants.
And they are butch.
I mean, it's impossible in real world
to have butchers for a beauty contest, to win nothing,
but to push lesbian visibility in a different way.
Shares will be performing tonight.
She's with me with Christy.
She's one of the young stars that I'm mentoring.
And I always think she's a hip hop artist
and also a traditional healer.
I'm moving around with her in different spaces.
And she's also one of those people
that make me want to work some more.
Because I want to see as she progresses,
as she reaches, you know, or she reaches her dream, you know?
Yeah.
So Cindy, am I going to become that reference point?
I like the work of David Goldblatt, who
is one person that I'm indebted to for my life.
And a person who gave me an opportunity
to gain the kind of education, university education.
I could not have afforded it if he didn't intervene.
So he helped me to cover for my education.
Did he personally coach you?
Did he recognize your talent and what you must have done?
David Goldblatt started Market Photowake Shop.
A lot of us come from Market Photowake Shop, you know?
A lot of us.
I come from that space.
That was a space for me to heal.
And a space for me where I made sense.
So I think I could say that period that I spent at Market
Photowake Shop was when I met my photo family, like here.
You know, I made so much sense.
I could articulate my issues.
I had support from John Fleetwood.
But David Goldblatt became that person.
Because I said to myself, there are so many people
who are activists in different ways.
But it's very rare for people who came away before us,
who could be our grandfathers.
But he obviously would have been my father.
To give back to the community, you know?
This is a man who gave us the school, not the money.
So later on in life, he paid for my education.
And I got my master in fine arts through him.
So I'll always be thankful to Goldblatt for that.
And also, I needed someone who looked at my work,
not with a queer eye.
Queers, they know queers.
We know what we're doing.
So I needed a straight man who was a father, who
is also a photographer, to critique my work.
So he wasn't there to babysit or to nurse me.
And anything that he didn't agree with,
he'd say, this doesn't work for me,
speaking as a straight man or also as a father.
Understanding South African history.
So I'll always be thankful for him rescuing me and for him
critiquing my work and educating me in ways
that no other person could.
Because when I started, I didn't have much reference.
No reference, the only reference document that I had
came from Africa, sorry, from America or from Europe.
So I didn't have much queer visual content
that I could speak to or refer back to.
And when I saw the work of Rotimi, I was quite excited.
When I saw, you know, a polyester suit of Robert
made me put up of that.
Game and I'm doing it.
Polyester suit.
Yeah.
Why?
I mean, why is that interesting?
That picture is queer beyond repents.
OK.
And nobody.
I mean, as Lisbians, you know, like I said,
the freedom that some of the gay men,
I don't want to generalize, especially for some gay men
who are not out as you, to say that you look at something
that you're longing for and it's given to you, you know,
how you last for something, et cetera, et cetera.
I cannot photograph a female genitalia
and fantasize about it and project it
like how they put up the date.
And because I'll be crucified by a lot of people.
And I don't need unnecessary prayers, you know.
So, yeah, I like it.
I like it.
I could write for days just to talk about that one.
Can I commission you to write about that?
That's something I'll write about.
I've got a magazine I know might be interested to hear.
Yeah, sure, sure, sure.
There are some many other individuals whose work I like so much.
But, yeah, yeah, the bit goes on, I guess, with still edits.
And self-portraits are important.
I think we're going to come to some at the tail end of the selection.
But what's the role of the selfie in your universe?
This is such a cliche, but it's used much for healing.
And they say, you have to do some self-introspection.
So I've been thinking a lot about that.
The self-introspection equals to selfie,
equals to self-consciousness.
It says, deal with yourself before you interfere
with other people's business.
Very good.
As a photographer, sometimes we divorce ourselves from we, from us.
So for the project that you're about to see here, it's going to show now.
So I was thinking to myself, I've experienced so much pain,
I've endured so much pain, I've witnessed so much pain.
And Ellen is working tirelessly, trying to deal with my pain.
And this is what I'm working on currently.
Can we stop with that picture?
What are we looking at?
Looking at my beautiful self.
We are looking at your beautiful self.
Looking at me.
And you, and you, looking at me.
Is that your hair?
I mean, tell me, tell us about what that's about.
You're looking at me.
Yes.
Thank you.
That's it.
That's all you want to say.
I love me.
We love you.
Yeah, man.
We love you.
Before I make love or give love to the next woman, I have to deal with me.
Yeah.
So you're looking at me, the true me.
I don't paint my face.
Ellen knows the trick.
And this image represents so many things that are unnerving and settling, queer, creepy,
and so on and so on.
But most of all, like these self-portraits will be 365 taken over a period of time.
I work on this project and I stop at some stage because I had issues.
I shoot.
I try to shoot every day.
And why I was late today because I had to shoot before I came here.
Because you had to shoot or because it was a particular picture.
You had to shoot in Virginia to mark this moment in history.
You did a selfie here.
Yes, I did.
I mean, you did a selfie here.
Okay.
So each and every of these portraits, I'll say self-portrait and portrait of the self
because this, you have to swim swap, yeah?
Self-portrait and portrait of the self.
And the portrait of the self will be when I really can't get it and somebody could get
it, but of me, directed by me in ways in which I like to be done, yeah.
See?
So each and every image represents a particular case in history.
Like here, it's a mine worker and it talks on a particular case in South African history.
Some of you, you know, of the Marigana case, a lot of minors were shot down in 2012 August.
So here I was just projecting that reality.
A lot of people were offended, like children offend, women without their husbands.
And I was thinking when that incident happened, what about gay men, who maybe all might have
lovers in those mines and how the portraits of the widows and the portraits of the victims
was projected.
And I was thinking of that one gay man who had a lover in those mines.
There was one particular out gay man, or?
Nobody has spoken of that.
So I created everything.
I bring it home.
Yeah.
So I was thinking, I wonder what happens to those gay men who lost their lovers, who
are mine workers, who won't be recognized simply because of their gender and simply because
of their being.
But it's not without this, the series is not without glamour.
What's this one?
I identify as butch, but sometimes I like to perform femme because it works and also
to undo the notion of like lesbians are ugly women, we're actually beautiful women and
happen to love the same sex.
This is just me performing, but also being serious about how these things works.
And I'm fascinated in this particular case, the images of, the iconic images of Grace
Jones.
Oh yeah, of course.
You know anything of those beautiful images that made the woman look otherwise?
Maybe other people did not even wish to consume them, but we cannot erase those images in
history because she was indeed a true diva, you know.
So but to be honest, and also to be back to me, and back to you as well.
I don't know how much a magazine editors and many other things and people who deal with
photographs, how ready are the magazine editors and those who own the magazine and media are
ready or willing to have black people in their covers.
In their covers.
Yeah.
I'd say maybe as a personal work for Apecha, you have heard about maybe 100 books.
Maybe 10% of your 100 books has black faces.
Maybe you lose sales because when I started, my friend had a magazine, it was a Lisbon
magazine.
And I said, my dream was to be in the cover of her magazine and she said, oh, we lose
a lot of clients because a lot of people were not ready for black faces as the covers
of the magazine.
I'm talking about South Africa 2000, 2000, 2001, 2003.
Her advertisers were not ready for the black covers.
And it meant that anything that was black could be in the middle or wherever, but not
as the cover.
And of maybe 20 copies that she had of that magazine, she had four blacks.
So I think here we're revisiting and talking about the politics of this black.
Not crucifying the editors, but to rethink and revisit, same like how I'm so happy to
be here.
I must say and declare and thank everybody who made it possible for me to be here.
I can't count people by names, but to be given a space, an open space, not to be shoved
in some closets at look three and be in the open and be free, to be here, to be here.
I'm in a public space and I won't make any demands.
There's nothing that I would ask for.
I don't need no silver, no gold, no platinum.
I'm in a public space for once I feel so free and for once I feel so happy and say somebody
listened and I'm given two sided, you know, what's waterproof material.
You can't deny our existence and I'm honestly thankful.
I didn't know that there was look three and I keep on being, you know, people recommend
the spaces and I get excited.
And also to be in the mainstream space when you talk of like where are we, how do I feel
and so on to all the look threes, triples, I'm thankful.
We'll put you on the cover.
