South African artist and activist Zanele Muholi was BOTD in 1972. Born in Umlazi, Durban, they were the youngest of eight children. Muholi father died shortly after their birth, and Muholi and their siblings were raised by relatives, while their mother worked for a white family. Muholi studied photography with David Goldblatt at the Market Photo Workshop in Johannesburg in 2003. The following year, they presented their debut solo show Visual Sexuality: Only Half the Picture at the Johannesburg Art Gallery, startling audiences with anonymised images of rape alongside portraits of rape survivors and police case notes. Describing themselves as a “visual activist”, Muholi co-founded the Forum for Empowerment of Women, and Inkanyiso, a forum for queer visual media artists. Referring to their photography subjects as “participants”, Muholi collaborates with them to create each image, frequently inviting them to speak at exhibitions. In 2006, Muholi began the Faces and Phases project, creating over 300 portraits of lesbian women over three years. Typically photographed in black-and-white and directly facing the camera, the images are accompanied by each participant’s name, the date and location of the portrait and details of their community. The exhibition toured at galleries in Munich, Berlin, London, New York and Montreal, inspired the 2010 TV documentary Difficult Love, and the companion photography series Trans(figures) and Brave Beauties, profiling South Africa’s trans community. After completing post-graduate study at Ryerson University in Toronto, Muholi was selected to represent South Africa at the 2013 Venice Biennale. Their other projects include the ongoing self-portrait series Somnyama Ngonyama (Hail the Dark Lioness), and 2014’s Of Love and Loss, portraying the violence and hate crimes experienced by LGBTQ South Africans. Muholi has been made a Chevalier d’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government, and was awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society in 2018. They live and work in Johannesburg with their partner Valerie.