Zanele Muholi’s recognition with the Hasselblad Award cements their place among photography’s most influential contemporary voices around representation.
By Abioye Damilare Samson
South African photographer and visual activist Zanele Muholi has been named the recipient of the 2026 Hasselblad Award, which is regarded as the world’s most prestigious prize for photography.
The Hasselblad Award, established in 1980 and often described as a “Nobel for photography”, carries a cash prize of 2 million Swedish kronor (approximately $217,000 USD), a gold medal, a Hasselblad camera, and the opportunity for a major solo exhibition at the Hasselblad Center in the Göteborg Museum of Art in Gothenburg, Sweden. This year’s installation will open on October 10, 2026, and run through April 4, 2027.
Zanele Muholi, born in 1972 in Umlazi, South Africa, has built a thriving practice centred on portraiture and visual activism. Over more than two decades, they have documented and celebrated Black LGBTQIA+ communities in South Africa and internationally, using photography to challenge erasure and discrimination while affirming the dignity, visibility, and humanity of their subjects.
Among contemporary photographers, Muholi stands out for their ability to fuse artistic precision with political urgency. Their work uses portraiture to articulate and celebrate the depth and dignity of Black queer lives in ways that have reshaped contemporary photographic practice. Muholi’s ongoing series Faces and Phases (2006 – present) is among their most influential bodies of work, developed as an act of resistance against systemic violence and erasure.
Accepting the award, Muholi emphasised the communal nature of their work, declaring that the honour belongs not only to them but to the many individuals and communities whose stories they have documented. “For years, my work has been about visibility and resistance”, Muholi said. “It has been about creating an archive so that no one can say, ‘We did not know’. I receive it on behalf of my community; those who have been erased, those who are still here, and those who are yet to see themselves reflected with dignity”.
Muholi’s recognition with the Hasselblad Award cements their place among photography’s most influential contemporary voices around representation, identity, and human rights through the power of visual storytelling.