Zanele Muholi is a visual activist and photographer renowned for their strikingly beautiful  black and white portraiture, documenting and celebrating the lives of black LGBTQI+ community in South Africa. Muholi captures empowering visuals on the subject of race, gender and sexuality through the camera’s lens and aspires to offset the stigma and negativity attached to queer identity in African society.
‍
The mandate was to design an art book that would represent and express the work of Zanele Muholi.

The exaggerated, high-contrast black and white tonal values of each monochrome image of Muholi had to be emphasized for the overall look of the book. It is symbolic of Muholi’s deliberate affirmation of their identity.

On the cover of the book, a self-portrait of Muholi against a stark background, gazing through the lens with piercing eyes portrays the fierceness, confidence, and vulnerability of Muholi as a visual activist. The piercing gaze creates a feeling of uneasiness for the viewer and relates to a more serious topic of hate crime against the LGBTQI+ community in South Africa and beyond, it shows strength and existence. The added slip case adds to the fragility of race and sexual tension, and the large white typography placed on top of the case conveys the boldness and empowerment of Muholi while creating a statement.