South African photographer and visual activist Zanele Muholi has been awarded the 2026 Hasselblad Award, widely regarded as the most prestigious prize in photography. The honor, accompanied by SEK 2,000,000 (approximately $218,000), places Muholi within a lineage that includes figures such as Cindy Sherman, Nan Goldin, and Sophie Calle—artists who have expanded the conceptual and political boundaries of the photographic image.

The award will be formally presented on October 9, 2026, followed by an artist talk at Moderna Museet. A major exhibition of Muholi’s work will open the following day at the Hasselblad Center, on view from October 10, 2026 through April 24, 2027, accompanied by a comprehensive publication.

While the Hasselblad Award often recognizes formal innovation within photography, Muholi’s selection underscores another dimension of the medium: its capacity to function simultaneously as art, archive, and political testimony. Over the past two decades, Muholi has constructed one of the most sustained visual records of Black queer life in the post-apartheid era—images that resist invisibility while refusing the spectacle of victimhood.

Muholi’s portraits, frequently rendered in stark black-and-white and illuminated with theatrical chiaroscuro, operate with a directness that borders on confrontation. Activists, drag performers, lovers, and friends stand before the camera not as anonymous subjects but as collaborators—participants in a collective act of representation.

As Muholi has repeatedly insisted, the work is not simply documentary:

This prize is not mine alone. I carry it with the many faces, names, and histories that have trusted me with their stories.

– As Muholi has repeatedly insisted, the work is not simply documentary:

In this sense, the Hasselblad Prize recognizes not only an artist, but a community.

Photography as Archive and Resistance

Born in 1972 in Umlazi, near Durban, under the apartheid regime, Muholi grew up in circumstances that shaped both their politics and their visual language. The youngest of eight children, Muholi was raised largely by extended family after their father died shortly after their birth and their mother worked long hours as a domestic worker for a white family—an experience emblematic of the racialized labor structures of apartheid South Africa.

Muholi studied photography at the Market Photo Workshop in Johannesburg in 2003 and later completed an MFA in Documentary Media at Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson University). Early in their career, Muholi rejected the conventional label of “artist,” describing themselves instead as a visual activist—a term that signals both method and responsibility.

Their work has consistently focused on documenting the lives of Black lesbian, gay, transgender, and intersex communities across South Africa. In a country where queer people—particularly Black lesbians—have faced widespread violence, including so-called “corrective rape,” Muholi’s photography functions as a counter-archive: an insistence that these lives not only exist but deserve to be recorded with dignity.

This commitment extends beyond representation. In 2002 Muholi co-founded the Forum for the Empowerment of Women, a Black lesbian organization dedicated to advocacy and community support. Later, in 2009, they established the nonprofit platform Inkanyiso (“illuminate” in Zulu), devoted to queer visual activism and media education.

Faces, Phases, and the Politics of Visibility

Muholi’s breakthrough series, Faces and Phases (2006–ongoing), remains one of the most significant portrait projects of the 21st century. The series now comprises hundreds of images depicting Black lesbians and transgender individuals photographed against neutral or patterned backgrounds.

The project began with a portrait of activist Busi Sigasa, a survivor of corrective rape who later died of HIV-related illness. From the outset, Muholi insisted on naming each participant and recording the time and place of each portrait—an intentional reversal of colonial photographic traditions that treated African subjects as anonymous specimens.

The title itself carries layered meaning. “Faces” refers to the individuals portrayed; “phases” to the evolving lives they inhabit over time. Participants often return to be photographed again, creating a longitudinal archive of identity, aging, and survival.

The project gained international visibility at Documenta 13 in 2012 and was later exhibited at institutions including the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.

Muholi’s approach echoes the early photographic archive assembled by W. E. B. Du Bois at the 1900 Paris Exposition—another attempt to counter racist visual narratives by producing dignified images of Black life.

Self-Portraiture and the Reclamation of the Gaze

If Faces and Phases construct a communal archive, Muholi’s later series Somnyama Ngonyama (“Hail the Dark Lioness”) turns the camera inward. Begun in 2012, the project consists of hundreds of self-portraits in which Muholi adopts a series of alter egos, often using everyday materials—scouring pads, clothespins, electrical cords—as sculptural adornments.

The images deliberately exaggerate the darkness of Muholi’s skin tone, reclaiming Blackness from histories of caricature and minstrel performance. At once theatrical and austere, the portraits invoke both historical studio photography and contemporary fashion imagery while dismantling the visual codes that have long shaped representations of race.

Critics have noted that these images operate on multiple registers: personal, political, and mythic. As cultural historian Maurice Berger wrote, the series “reimagines Black identity in ways that are largely personal but inevitably political.”

Somnyama Ngonyama debuted at Yancey Richardson Gallery in New York in 2015 and later appeared on digital billboards across Times Square during the 2017 Performa Biennial.

Beyond the Frame

Muholi’s practice extends beyond portraiture. Projects such as Only Half the Picture (2004) confront the realities of hate crimes against queer individuals in South Africa, while Of Love & Loss (2014) juxtaposes images of weddings and funerals to reflect the precarious balance between celebration and mourning within LGBTQIA communities.

Other bodies of work—including Brave Beauties (2014) and Trans(figures) (2010–2011)—expand this visual archive to include transgender and gender-nonconforming individuals across both urban and rural contexts.

Throughout these projects, Muholi insists on collaboration. Those photographed are not “subjects” but participants—individuals who help shape their own representation and often speak publicly alongside the images.

A Living Archive

Today Muholi lives and works in Cape Town, where they continue to combine artistic production with mentorship and education. The artist currently supports dozens of emerging photographers, providing housing, equipment, and training to students from under-resourced communities.

The ambition is long-term: Muholi has announced plans to establish the Muholi Art Institute, a space dedicated to supporting queer and marginalized artists.

Such initiatives underscore the broader logic of Muholi’s practice. The photographs are not merely images; they are nodes within a larger ecosystem of activism, pedagogy, and community building.

In awarding the Hasselblad Prize, the foundation recognized Muholi’s ability to merge formal rigor with political clarity. But perhaps the deeper significance of the work lies elsewhere.

For Muholi, photography is not simply a medium of representation.
It is a way of insisting that certain lives—long excluded from history—will no longer remain unseen.