The Hasselblad Award, the world’s largest prize in pictures, has been awarded to South African visible activist Zanele Muholi – “one of the most influential contemporary photographers, with an impact that reaches far beyond the art world,” the Foundation says.
Presented yearly by the Hasselblad Foundation since 1980, the distinguished award consists of SEK 2,000,000 (approx. $217,000 / £162,087/ AU$308,048), a gold medal, and a Hasselblad digital camera (value over US$7,000). The prize makes it the largest accessible for a photograph contest – eclipsing that accessible for the general winner of the HIPA contest.
Over a profession spanning greater than twenty years, Muholi has created highly effective portrait sequence that doc and have fun the lives of Black LGBTQIA+ communities.
For this, Muholi labored with Canon cameras such because the EOS R5 or EOS 5D Mark IV, paired with traditional portrait lenses together with the EF 50mm f/1.8 STM and EF 85mm f/1.4 DG HSM Art, together with zooms just like the EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6L IS USM.
The successful work
The Hasselblad Foundation citation states, “Born in 1972 during the apartheid regime, they are highly aware of the power of narration in the face of systematic violence. Muholi’s photographs are formally compelling, employing composition, colour, greyscale, and lighting to create an adept visual language that holds both strength and vulnerability.
“The portraits foreground individuals with a direct and dignified gaze, challenging prejudice and discrimination while creating alternative visual histories. Activism and community work is an integral part of their practice, which combines political urgency and formal mastery, making Muholi a central figure in global queer visual culture.”
Photography as visible activism
Born in Umlazi, Durban, Muholi has pioneered the usage of pictures as a type of visible activism, addressing race, identification, and illustration.
Their long-running portrait mission Faces and Phases (2006 -) paperwork Black lesbian, transgender, and gender-nonconforming people and is extensively thought to be a landmark sequence in modern pictures.
Other tasks embrace Only Half of the Picture (2003-2004), which documented lesbian lives and survivors of hate crimes, and Brave Beauties (2014-), celebrating trans ladies.
In the ongoing self-portrait series Somnyama Ngonyama (Hail the Dark Lioness), Muholi draws on visual references from fashion, domestic labour, and ethnographic imagery to challenge historical depictions of Black bodies.
Alongside their artistic work, Muholi founded Inkanyiso in 2009, a platform devoted to queer and visible activist media, and established the Muholi Art Institute in 2022 to assist rising artists.
Muholi explains
“This prize is not mine alone. I carry it with the many faces, names, and histories that have trusted me with their stories. From Umlazi to every space where Black LGBTQIA+ people continue to fight to exist freely, this recognition affirms that our lives are worthy of being seen – not as statistics, not as shadows, but as full human beings.
“For years, my work has been about visibility and resistance. It has been about creating an archive so that no one can say, ‘We did not know.’ When this honour comes, I receive it on behalf of my community; those who have been erased, those who are still here, and those who are yet to see themselves reflected with dignity,” Muholi says.
For more information and to see the entire selection of winning photographs, visit the Hasselblad Foundation website.