Africa Is a Country

Gay in Africa

Gay in Africa

By
Sean Jacobs

Two photographers - unrelated - highlight the precarious existence of gay lives on the continent.

By Tadej Žnidarčič.

The Slovenian photographer, Tadej Žnidarčič‘s series of portraits of gay men and women in Uganda is called “Being Gay in Uganda,” They all have their backs turned to the camera. Žnidarčič’s subjects are coy for a reason. Attracting attention can be fatal: “The problem is the way I dress. Everyone is asking, ‘is that a boy or a girl?’ In clubs, when ladies can get in for free, they push us, tell us we are not ladies and that we have to pay. They scream: ‘Is she boy or a girl? Is that man or a woman?’ As tom-boy, everyone looks at you.”

Žnidarčič is one of seven photographers in the “Moving Walls” photographic exhibition opening in mid-March at the Open Society Documentary Project in New York City (and that will travel elsewhere, including hopefully to Uganda).  It could not have come at a better moment for those concerned about and campaigning against the growing homophobia on the continent (see, for example, the statement by bloggers posted on this blog and elsewhere yesterday).

Sam, 2010.

Žnidarčič is one of seven photographers in the “Moving Walls” photographic exhibition opening in mid-March at the Open Society Documentary Project in New York City (and that will travel elsewhere, including hopefully to Uganda).  It could not have come at a better moment for those concerned about and campaigning against the growing homophobia on the continent (see, for example, the statement by bloggers posted on this blog and elsewhere yesterday).  He is also one of two photographers in Moving Walls who focus on gay identity and homophobia on the continent in their work.

The other is Bénédicte Desrus. Her “Persecution of Homosexuality in Uganda” covers events around the Anti-Homosexuality Bill introduced in the Ugandan parliament in October 2009. (The Bill proposes life imprisonment for anyone engaged in homosexual activities and the death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality”).

Anti-gay pastors in Uganda. Bénédicte Desrus.

Closer to home in New York City, a third photographer, Jamaican-born, Samantha Box, covered homeless minority LGBT youth in New York City.

Samantha Fox.

Here are the details for the exhibition.

Further Reading

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Fragile state

Without an immediate change in approach, Somalia will remain a fragmented country populated by self-serving elites seeking foreign patrons.

Coming home

In 1991, acclaimed South African artist Helen Sebidi’s artworks were presumed stolen in Sweden. Three decades later, a caretaker at the residential college where they disappeared found them in a ceiling cupboard, still in their original packaging.

Imaginary homelands

A new biography of former apartheid homeland leader Lucas Mangope struggles to do more than arrange the actions of its subject into a neat chronology.

Business as usual?

This month, Algeria quietly held its second election since Abdelaziz Bouteflika was ousted in 2019. On the podcast, we ask what Abdelmadjid Tebboune’s second term means for the country.

The complexities of solidarity

Assassinated in 1978, Henri Curiel was a Jewish Egyptian Marxist whose likely killers include fascist French-Algerian colons, the apartheid South African Bureau of State Security, and the Abu Nidal Organization.