Gradients of Detail

Reflections on Zanele Muholi’s Somnyama Ngonyama

(Hail the Dark Lioness)

(Originally published in Musée Magazine)

Multiplicity: the quality or state of being multiple or various. Several elements or parts. Elements work together and do not have to signify a whole. Who decides coherence? Assert the right to multiplicity.

Visual activist Zanele Muholi’s ongoing series Somnyama Ngonyama (Hail the Dark Lioness) positions the artist as understanding themself as an expression of multiplicity, inhabiting a range of archetypes and personas that relate to South Africa’s socio-political histories and extend into more global cultural narratives. The series adds another personal layer to Muholi’s work, as they act as both the photographer and focus of the images. Drawing on modes of performance, Muholi intentionally stages each photo through stylized fashion and props. From clothespins to a wig and crown and large plastic tubes that snake around their upper body, the objects do not overwhelm Muholi’s presence, and instead indicate a careful attention to the conversation with the object in the photographs. Their face is usually visible, eyes staring directly at the camera. Does the viewer have “access” to Muholi through this gaze or is it part of the performance, a meticulously constructed connection that allows them to safeguard their interiority while making themself appear available to the camera?

Invoking the dark lioness in the title Somnyama Ngonyama, Muholi centers Black womxn as critical to historical and contemporary conceptions of South Africa. Throughout the series, they meditate on the demands and expectations placed on Black womxn, interrogating questions of self-representation and the assumed availability of Black being for others to extract-even through the gaze. Discussing the series in an interview for The Guardian, Muholi identifies the materiality that shape the images, saying, “The black body itself is the material, the black body that is ever scrutinized, and violated and undermined.”[1] By enacting these various personas, Muholi asks who is allowed to “perform” Black subjectivity and what are the forms through which Blackness takes shape? 

Prior to Somnyama Ngonyama, Muholi’s photography documented other members of the LGBTQIA community in South Africa, rarely turning the lens on themself. This documentation is critical to their role as a visual activist, centering the nuanced experiences and rich lives of Black LGBTQIA South Africans that have long been left out of the country’s collective history. It is also a key method of increasing awareness on the forms of violence that many face. In a 2014 video for Design Idaba, Muholi is seen braiding the hair of the sitter who will be the focus of one of the portraits. Responding to the question of their influence in staging the portraits, Muholi laughs and responds, “I just want people to look good. I really, really want people to be fresh.”[2] Each portrait is an act of care that holds the sitter in their complexity, demanding nothing but a moment to be.   

In Ndiville II (Malmo, 2015), Muholi is framed in the center of the image. Lips parted slightly, their intent gaze commands attention. A black top cut into a deep scoop around the neck highlights the definition of their collar bones and creates an angularity that underscores the various lines shaping the image. More than eighty thin sticks protrude from their locs, tied in a high bun. Muholi employs their signature attention to gradients of black, using heightened contrast and precise lighting to accentuate their bodily features and the visual textures of the photograph. In scholar Tina Campt’s essay, “The Visual Frequency of Black Life”[3] she discusses the concept of frequency as an analytic to engage the sonic resonance of an image. What is the sonic frequency of Muholi’s photographs? For Campt, still images can connect with the viewer on a sonic level that arouse a range of affective responses. She refers to the “visual frequency of black life” as “irregular rates of vibration that register differential value of the black experience.” Listening to Muholi’s photographs in Somnyama Ngonyama, a penetrative quiet draws me into a meditation on detail. In most of the images in the series, Muholi stares directly at the camera. Rather than read this as confronting the viewer’s gaze, what if Muholi is staring beyond, past the eyes that look at them, towards something else? Their gaze conjures possibility, gesturing to expansive conceptions of desire, subjectivity, and Black life.  

Artist, scholar, and radical sex activist Ajamu reads Muholi’s Senzeni I in his piece, “Particles of Blackness”[4], delving into their complex understanding of tones and textures of black. Both naming and going beyond notions of race, he asks “Is there a poetics to blackness?” Muholi’s photographic practice is oriented towards materiality, implying careful study and a sensuous relationship to image making. Ajamu continues, “Zanele’s working material is the materiality of their own body, which leads to a reconfiguring of notions of subject and object, self and other, simultaneously, re/claiming their own multidimensional notions of blackness.” Muholi’s images interrogate the confines of identity politics through performances that interpellate the vastness of queer subjectivity and engage the multivalence of Blackness.

Standing in a side-ways boxing stance, Muholi raises both fists wrapped in white gloves. Torso fully nude, the artist wears an Isicholo, a hat traditionally reserved for married Zulu women and worn for special events. Bicep defined; the muscle of their neck holds a tension that signals a readiness to respond. Muholi stares at the camera with a slightly sad resolve. MaID I (Syracuse 2015), the photograph carries a physical dynamism that stands out in the series. The concept of MaID means both “my identity” and alludes to the commonplace categorizing of working-class Black women in South Africa as maids. Muholi often talks about the influence their mother Bester, who was a domestic worker, has on their artwork. The photo confronts the oppressive conditions that violently impact the lives of Black working-class women.

Covered entirely by cloth, Bester VIII (Philadelphia, 2018) is one of few images in the series where Muholi’s body is not partially visible. One eye peers through the geometric pattern of the photographic lighting dome that is turned towards the viewer, reflecting the light of the camera. Look closely, the polygonal shapes enclose their pupil. The lines of the cloth are so explicit, appearing almost digitized. Starkly different from others in the series, the photograph animates a question on whether viewers have become too accustomed to a hyper-focus on Muholi’s skin, through the depth of contrast that is often highlighted in discussions of their work? With the intimacy of naming the image after their mother, I also view the cloth as a cloak of protection-the viewer’s access restricted.

In Zodwa II (Amsterdam, 2015) Muholi does not gaze straight at the camera, but rather looks inward. The artist lies naked on a bed, a soft light washing over their face. Their eyes are turned away from the camera, their face is cradled in the nook of their left arm. Feet crossed at the ankles and toes resting on the wall, they are surrounded by a latticework of shadows on crumpled sheets. With few emblematic objects staged in the photograph, the image exudes a private familiarity as one witnesses Muholi resting. In an interview with journalist Jenna Wortham for the New York Times, Muholi discusses what it means for them to hold the stories of pain that LGBTQIA+ folks share with them as a key component of their visual activism.[5] “I’ve listened to so many people’s pain, and it meant I had to sleep with that pain…When do photographers get time to deal with their own pain and be given their space to do it?” Muholi’s question indicates the labor of care work and the difficulties of emotional sustainability, calling for space to rest, reflect and reckon with the pain they both experience and are proximate to.  

Each self-portrait in Somnyama Ngonyama (Hail the Dark Lioness) is a letter, both to Muholi and the Black queer communities they lift up in their work, expressed through contemplative textures, tones and frequencies.

Notes:

[1] Emine Saner. “‘I’m scared. But this work needs to be shown’: Zanele Muholi’s 365 protest photographs.” The Guardian, July 14, 2017. 

[2] “Zanele Muholi: When do we start talking about intimacy?” YouTube, uploaded by Design Idaba, May 16, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZ-2PMurqQk&t=73s&ab_channel=DesignIndaba. 

[3] Tina Campt. “The Visual Frequency of Black Life: Love, Labor, and the Practice of Refusal.” Social Text, Vol. 37, No. 3, 2019.

[4] Ajamu. “Particles of Blackness: Musings on Senzeni I.” Autograph ABP, 2017.

[5] Jenna Wortham. “Zanele Muholi’s Transformations.” The New York Times Magazine, Oct. 8, 2015.