Zanele Muholi was born in Umlazi, Durban, in 1972, and lives in Johannesburg. She studied photography at the Market Photo Workshop. She was a founder of the Forum for the Empowerment of Women (FEW), a black lesbian organisation based in Gauteng. Muholi’s Faces and Phases series was included on Documenta 13, in Kassel, Germany. Her work has been exhibited in at the Walther Collection, Germany in 2012, Art Basel in 2011, and various solo and group shows at the Stevenson Gallery among others. In 2010 her Faces and Phases series was included on the 29th São Paulo Biennale; the series was published by Prestel and nominated as best photobook of 2010 at the International Photobook Festival in Kassel.

She was the recipient of the International Freedom of Expression Index Award in 2013, 2005 Tollman Award for the Visual Arts, the first BHP Billiton/Wits University Visual Arts Fellowship in 2006, and the 2009 Ida Ely Rubin Artist-in- Residence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In 2009 she received a Fanny Ann Eddy accolade from IRN-Africa for her outstanding contributions to the study of sexuality in Africa. She also won a Casa Africa Award and a Fondation Blachère award at Les Rencontres de Bamako Biennial of African photography in 2009. Muholi has been nominated for the Rencontres d’Arles Discovery Award, exhibiting there in 2012.