Faces and Phases 19: Zanele Muholi's radical portraits of Black Queer resilience

Southern Guild presents the photographic exhibition Faces and Phases 19 by Zanele Muholi at its Los Angeles gallery from May 16 – September 6, 2025. The solo exhibition marks 19 years of Muholi's photographic project, which documents the lives of Black lesbian, bisexual and Queer women, Trans and gender non-conforming people. The project, initially focused on South Africa, has expanded to include portraits from the US, UK, Brazil, and Portugal, forming a 'living Queer archive' of nearly 1,000 photographs. Coinciding with Los Angeles' Pride Month, the exhibition is accompanied by a programme of talks and events featuring Muholi and the broader Queer community.

Muholi began Faces and Phases in 2006 to counteract homophobic, transphobic and patriarchal violence prevalent in South Africa despite the legalisation of same-sex marriage. "In the face of the LGBTQIA+ community's experience of grief, often exacerbated in the media by traumatising imagery or faceless statistics, Muholi sought to assert a counternarrative. In the collection of minimally staged, non-glamorised black-and-white portraits, Faces and Phases offered stories of Black lesbian life as beautiful, defiant and, crucially, as normal," notes Southern Guild in the show's official press release. The project has evolved to include images and stories of Black Trans men and gender non-conforming people, showcasing a representational diversity of Black Queer expression.

Central to Muholi's practice is the hard gaze of each participant, which challenges the viewer and confronts colonial archives, patriarchy and global fascism targeting marginalised bodies. "Configured around this gaze, Muholi's photographic strategy can be imagined as an ongoing exercise in portrayal, prioritising the carriage of the participant's power over the photographic potential to capture the subject or hold them still," the gallery notes. The project is an expression of love for the community, involving extensive interviewing and documentation of participant testimonials. Muholi often revisits and rephotographs participants, embracing the fluid nature of identity and resisting static representations.

Faces and Phases 19 subverts top-down global knowledge production, offering a South African perspective on the experiences of participants from various countries. It specifically defies the current US administration's targeting of Trans bodies. "This energy of defiance echoes throughout the project, which always prioritises the invitation and celebration of the participants to whom the archive first belongs," Southern Guild notes.

In its many hundreds of gazes, and its embrace of Queer transition, Faces and Phases 19 is a force of life. Muholi's continued confrontation with the legacy of violent representation is, in this work, a sustained commitment to Black Queer love—grounded in curiosity, care and profound respect.