Photographer Zanele Muholy and Hasselblad Award 2026 recipient

A conversation between South African photographer and visual activist Zanele Muholi and Astrid Birnbaum, recorded in Stockholm inside Faces and Phases: The Stockholm Edition at Eva Livijns Art Space (curated by Ulrika Flink), alongside a larger presentation at the Hasselblad Center in Gothenburg.

Muholi reflects on receiving the Hasselblad Award 2026 as recognition for the communities whose stories they’ve documented, and traces an artistic journey shaped by township life under apartheid, activism, and the need for respectful, positive representation.

They discuss why “any space is a space” if collaborators are safe and respected, and how showing work in a home can feel warmer and less intimidating than institutions.

Muholi shares how Faces and Phases formally grew from personal and collective loss, expands through international collaborations including Black Queer Sweden, and explains Somnyama Ngonyama as self-portraiture, healing, ancestry, and language, where titles arrive through meaning, memory, and time.