Broadcast DetailsShow: Headwrap IIEpisode Title: A New Way Of Looking
Date: Thursday, 27 July, 2006
Time: 18h30
Channel: SABC 1
---------------------------------------------------
Lee & Zanele
Zanele Muholi, is a photographer with a social conscience who explores issues of gender in her work. Trained at the Market Photo Workshop, Muholi came to national attention in September 2004 with her exhibition Visual Sexuality at the Johannesburg Art Gallery.
Her work is without precedent in South Africa where there are very few instances of black women openly portraying female same-sex practices and questioning traditional beauty stereotypes. “I am inspired by women, the women who understand what has to be done.”
Zanele's images are real and raw and demand a reaction.
Lee Kasumba is the Editor of YMag and a YFM DJ. She is a modern woman who has a social agenda but understands the importance of a commercial buy-in to her magazine.
Zanele and Lee have to come up with a picture feature that combines their different professional and personal ideas. As a gender and sexual rights activist, and as a photographer, Zanele confronts the notion that lesbian practices are alien to African cultures, and offers a radical break from stereotypical narratives about black female sexualities.
Zanele says: “You have to keep up with what is new, which is why I have to mainstream my photographs so that everyone can read and understand them.”
For Lee, it’s all about the commercial aspects of the magazine and presenting two YFM deejays, Unathi and Dineo, in a new way that will still be palatable to the YMag audience. “Yes, it’s all about art and documenting urban youth, but at the end of the day the most important is the business element,” says Lee.
Will she be able to publish Zanele’s “in your face” lesbian activist pictures or will she try and tone them down? What happens when Lee and her publication team make the decision to publish or not?