curate:

Zanele has started an Indiegogo campaign to raise funds to replace her equipment – PLEASE watch the video and donate what you can

I”ve lost all the work I produced from 2008 – 2012. Also backups were stolen.
I thought of the day I spoke with another friend about alternative storage. Now it is too late.
I feel like a breathing zombie right now.
I don’t even know where to start. I’m wasted.
I’ve sent out a note to friends to tell them about the incident.

The person/s got access to the flat via the toilet window, broke the burglar guard and got away with my cameras, lenses, memory cards and external hard drives, laptop, cellphones…
Whoever ransacked the place got away with more than 20 external hard drives with the most valuable content I’ve ever produced

I am hoping that a few of my good friends are willing to go to pawn shops or to other places where this type of equipment is sold. I do not even want to know who the thief is.

Campaign to replace Zanele Muholi’s stolen photography equipment

On the 28th April, Zanele returned home from Seoul, South Korea to discover that all her work between 2008 and 2012 stored on 20 hard drives and including backups had been stolen on the 20th. The thieves also stole her cameras, lens, memory sticks and laptops. There are no words to describe Zanele’s feelings at this time as an entire original archive of Black queer lesbian history has been destroyed and that impacts on all of us – makes invisible what Zanele has worked so hard to make visible and speak of through her photography. via blacklooks

(via derica)

(via Tee A. Corinne)

MAKING RELATIONSHIPS VISIBLE

In 1975, the year in which I most fully came out, I started making self-portraits that combined my own image with that of a lover. Photographer Honey Lee Cottrell (see Nothing But The Girl: The Blatant Lesbian Image) was my beloved at that time, and together we explored ways to make images that ìreadî as lesbian. In some of these pictures, I am nude and she is partially clothed. In one, I have my hand on her thigh and am looking into the camera as she looks at me.

(via Michael Stevenson)

Zanele Muholi Apinda Mpako and Ayanda Magudulela, Parktown, Johannesburg 2007

Sistahs 2003. Zanele Muholi.

Her photographs offer a view from the inside, a personal perspective on the challenges facing black lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people in the (South African) townships and other communities. via Michael Stevenson gallery

Whole of Muholi’s Only Half the Picture exhibition at linked gallery. Much NSFW content: erotic nudes, hate crime survivor scars, periods etc.

(via Zanele Muholi: Indawo Yami : carlagirl photo.)

Miss Lesbian I. Amsterdam 2009

(via Gladys Bentley) a better pic.

theprideline:

Trailer for “I Am” (documentary by Sonali Gulati) (by iamdocumentary)

I Am is a feature-length documentary film that chronicles the journey of an Indian lesbian filmmaker who returns to Delhi, eleven years later, to re-open what was once home, and finally confronts the loss of her mother whom she never came out to. As she meets and speaks to parents of other gay and lesbian Indians, she pieces together the fabric of what family truly means, in a landscape where being gay was until recently a criminal and punishable offense.

(via creatrixtiara)

gray37:

The “Untitled Black Lesbian Elder Project” is underway (via AfterEllen.com)

In a youth obsessed culture, and a queer scene where you often have to dig to find good representations of people of color, here’s a breath of fresh air: The Untitled Black Lesbian Elder Project. This new film collaboration is exactly what it sounds like — a feature length documentary on the lives of several black lesbian women in their 60s, 70s and 80s, talking about their experiences in politically important times.

This gem of lesbian history and documentary filmmaking is the brainchild of filmmaker Tiona McCloddenand publisher Lisa C. Moore. If a publisher sounds like an odd accomplice for a filmmaker, have no fear: Moore is head of the fierce Red Bone Press, which publishes books by black gay and lesbian authors.

Red Bone’s mission is to cultivate understanding between black queer culture and black mainstream culture, and their roster has won of slew of awards. Moore herself edited the Lambda award winning anthology does your mama know? An Anthology of Black Lesbian Coming Out Stories, an important collection that documents the black lesbian experience. (Moore actually founded Red Bone Press after publishers told her there was “no market” for the anthology. The book is now in its fourth printing.) She’s also the Board president of Fire and Ink, a much needed organization that advocates for LGBT writers of African descent.

While written anthologies of personal stories are one way to capture queer history, there’s something incredibly powerful about capturing oral histories on film. Filmmaker and multimedia artist Tiona McClodden is the force behind the 2009 documentary black./womyn.: conversations with lesbians of African descent, which won the Best Documentary feature at the Philadelphia Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, and a Best Of award at the New Fest, New York’s LGBT Film Festival.

The film gracefully sewed together dozens of interviews with lesbians of African descent, each interview happening more or less as a conversation with McClodden herself. The film included conversations with artists and writers such as Staceyann Chin, Fiona Zedde and others. Writing about the film, McClodden has said of the project, “I hope this film will provide a way for Black lesbians like me to see each other and be affirmed in our existence as a powerful and strong social force with important opinions. We, as black lesbians, have something to say, and if given the opportunity can and will say it loudly.”

The Untitled Black Lesbian Elder Project is an unprecedented opportunity for these voices to be heard. In describing the project, it’s noted that the stories gathered will reveal underground black lesbian movements which will solidify the place of black lesbians in American black history.

To support the film, McClodden and Moore have rigorous fundraising plans, including a talk to launch the project this month at the LGBT Center in New York. Fans of this project can keep tabs as things progress through the project’s Tumblr. And hopefully soon we’ll be seeing the tales of these women on the big screen. It’s about time.

(via )

thegang:

SHAKEDOWN is the story of a black lesbian strip club in Los Angeles. The film is anchored in the stories of three women: Ronnie Ron, the creator and emcee of “Shakedown, a large butch/stud lesbian and former Jehovah’s Witness; Egypt, a single mother, beauty pageant fanatic, and dedicated self - (re)inventor; and Jazmyne, the complicated and sometimes conflicted “Queen” of Shakedown. We go through the process of their labor with them and record what they do, and how they feel about what they are doing.”

(via femmefluff:polypeopleofcolor)

More from the director Leilah Weinraub’s statement and kickstarter fundraising page [which only has a few more days to go, if you can support it!]

The films structure employs the cycle of money exchanged and passed through the world as a metaphor for energy; from costume maker to security guard to patrons to the dancer’s children. SHAKEDOWN emphasizes the symbiotic nature of how things work in a system.

SHAKEDOWN is a feature-length video documentary about women’s work, and how work forms identity. Its also a history of Los Angeles, or a history of Los Angeles’ black lesbian nightclub scene, and its genesis. It’s a history told in opposition to other histories of black performance art. It is important to me to show that this world / structure was created, planned and built.

(via sexartandpolitics)

queerarty:

Ginger Brooks Takahashi, The Lesbian Body, 2006

Dear Friends, For many years - since I came out as being lesbian/queer - I have been thinking about the visual representation of ‘queer women’ in popular culture, visual art, media and the public realm. Often, I have toyed with the idea of making images that reflect the intimate and daily experience of women who love women.

Living in India, this has often been a difficult proposition since it is extremely problematic for women to be OUT (visually) for varying reasons of safety that could lead to loosing jobs, apartments and fracture further the relationship with our families, friends and general social interaction and mobility. This is true for queer women in many parts of the world.

Therefore, while many of us make self-portraits, have intimate photos of ourselves or our partners and friends, daily life record etc, these are mostly restricted to the privacy of our homes and shared with a handful of people. How then to represent a wide range of images of queer women from different parts of the world? Images that reflect ourselves, our lovers, partners, familiars, alternative families etc. while being able to reflect gender, sexuality, race, culture, ability and age?

One possible answer came to me as I was looking through the holiday photos of friends, pictures they had taken of themselves (auto-portraits) on the beach at dawn. Suddenly I felt so delighted to simply see images of a dyke couple on holiday! That kicked started – Queer women take a holiday! Pictures taken by us for ourselves - record, and documentation of our lives - the way we choose to make it.

So please, I request you to send me at least one holiday photo of yourself - either alone, with your former/current lover/s, partner/s, familiars (human or non-human), and friends or family (with their permission of course). I propose to compile the images I receive from you into a book (no publishers as yet, but I am looking) and possibly into a web archive. via :::Project:::queerwomentakeaholiday:::

What a great concept re: snapshots as a ‘conspicuous by abscence’ queer signifier! The project is by Tejal Shah, a multi-disciplinary artist from India and Melbourne. As far as can tell it’s ongoing, click for details.

ardhra:

documentary about queer South Asian women in NYC

What role does the South Asian LGBT community in New York City play in the life of ‘A’, who might never tell her family that she is a lesbian? In contrast, what do Priyanka, who lives with her girlfriend and is able to be open about her sexuality, and Ashu, a DJ who runs Sholay productions, a social events group for queer South Asians, gain from being a part of this community? Desigirls follows ‘A’ and Priyanka as they negotiate their diverse and often fraught experiences as gay Indian women in New York.  While ‘A’ is not comfortable with her sexuality, how is it that Priyanka, brought up in India, is? The documentary explores what their varying experiences tell us about the role of minority community groups in a diverse and often fractured immigrant society.

sexuality-space:

Debbie Grossman, Jessie Evans-Whinery, homesteader, with her wife Edith Evans-Whinery 2010

This series of works entitled My Pie Town, is an amazing re-imagination of Russell Lee’s collection of images, taken on behalf of the United States Farm Security Administration in 1940. Lee’s documentary work - of life in PieTown, New Mexico - is typical of work sponsored by the FSA in Depression-era America. Documentary, mythologizing, nostalgic - an attempt to capture small, rural communitites whose ‘innocent’ way of life was under threat (from financial crisis, from the lure of the city etc).

Grossman, oddly enough, shares a similar concern to Lee, 70 years later - a nostalgic longing for community - but has taken Lee’s work and mutated it for nefarious lesbian purposes. ….

guerrillamamamedicine:

fyeahafrica:

gray37:

Zanele Muholi, born in Umlazi, Durban, is an emerging, yet already internationally recognized photographer and activist. She’s the co-founder of the Forum for the Empowerment of Women (FEW), a black lesbian organization based in Johannesburg. Her work represents the black female body in frank yet intimate ways and challenges the portrayal of black women’s bodies in documentary photography. Zanele’s solo exhibition Only half the picture, which showed at Capetown South Africa’s Michael Stevenson Gallery in March 2006, has travelled to the Market Photo Workshop in Johannesburg and the Afrovibes Festival in Amsterdam. (via Egale Canada and the Black Coalition for AIDS Prevention recognize leaders in the fight for human rights