Zanele Muholi: 2026 Hasselblad Award Laureate

Hasselblad Foundation has announced that Zanele Muholi is the recipient of the 2026 Hasselblad Award, widely regarded as one of the most prestigious honors in international photography. The award includes a SEK 2,000,000 prize, a gold medal, and a Hasselblad camera, recognizing Muholi’s profound contribution to contemporary visual culture.

As part of the award, Muholi will be celebrated with a major solo exhibition at the Hasselblad Center, on view from October 10, 2026, to April 4, 2027. The exhibition will coincide with Hasselblad Award Week in Gothenburg, featuring a rich program of events including a seminar organized with the County Administrative Board of Västra Götaland, a concert by the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, the exhibition opening, and the launch of a new book dedicated to the artist’s work.

The official award ceremony will take place on October 9, 2026, followed by an artist talk at Moderna Museet in Stockholm on October 13.

The Hasselblad Foundation’s citation regarding the Hasselblad Award laureate 2026, Zanele Muholi: Zanele Muholi stands as one of the most influential contemporary photographers, with an impact that reaches far beyond the art world. They use portraiture to articulate and celebrate the presence, depth, and dignity of the Black LGBTQIA+ community in South Africa and the rest of the world. Born in 1972 during the apartheid regime, they are highly aware of the power of narration in the face of systematic violence. Muholi’s photographs are formally compelling, employing composition, colour, greyscale, and lighting to create an adept visual language that holds both strength and vulnerability. The portraits foreground individuals with a direct and dignified gaze, challenging prejudice and discrimination while creating alternative visual histories. Activism and community work is an integral part of their practice, which combines political urgency and formal mastery, making Muholi a central figure in global queer visual culture.

Zanele Muholi: ”This prize is not mine alone. I carry it with the many faces, names, and histories that have trusted me with their stories. From Umlazi to every space where Black LGBTQIA+ people continue to fight to exist freely, this recognition affirms that our lives are worthy of being seen – not as statistics, not as shadows, but as full human beings. For years, my work has been about visibility and resistance. It has been about creating an archive so that no one can say, ‘We did not know.’ When this honour comes, 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.”

Kalle Sanner, CEO of the Hasselblad Foundation: “It is with great pleasure that we award Zanele Muholi the 46th Hasselblad Award. In their artistic practice, Muholi combines photography with activism, creating powerful and significant works in which human rights are central. We look forward to presenting an extensive selection of their work this autumn at the Hasselblad Center.”

About Zanele Muholi
Zanele Muholi has paved new ground in their use of photography in visual activism, first and foremost in a relentless fight for claiming visibility, dignity and respect for Black queer subjects. Their practice is a fearless confrontation of the silencing and discrimination particularly in their native South-Africa. Their long-term portrait series Faces and Phases (2006–), was conceived as an act of resistance against systemic violence. The project has entered its 20th year and is now considered a seminal body of work in contemporary photography. Other works include the early Only half the Picture (2003-4) which documented lesbian lives and hate-crime survivors, and Brave Beauties (2014–) that honours trans women. In the ongoing self-portrait series Somnyama Ngonyama (Hail the Dark Lioness) (2018–) Muholi uses the visual languages of classical portraiture, fashion, domestic labour, and ethnographic imagery, to challenge stereo-types and historical representation of Black bodies in visual culture. These bold self-portraits have redefined visual strategies around identity and empowerment.

As an integral part of their artistic practice, Muholi is committed to collec-tive empowerment and knowledge-building. Inkanyiso was founded 2009 as a forum dedicated to queer and visual activist media, and The Muholi Art Institute (founded 2022) aims to support and develop emerging artists across diverse disciplines. Muholi’s work is central to contemporary de-bates on race, representation, activism, and human rights. They have been foundational for a new generation of queer and Black photographers and inspire emerging artists to work politically, ethically, and with community engagement.

Zanele Muholi (she/they) was born 1972 in Umlazi, Durban and currently lives and works between Johannesburg and Cape Town. They studied Advanced Photography at the Market Photo Workshop in Johannesburg and completed an MFA in Documentary Media at Ryerson University, Toronto, in 2009. Muholi’s work has been exhibited at leading institutions worldwide, including at the Venice Biennale, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris, Tate Modern, London, Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires and Serralves Museum in Porto. Previous solo exhibitions in Sweden include Fotografiska (2018) and Bildmuseet (2021). They have received numerous awards such as the ICP Spotlights Award (2022), the Spectrum International Prize for Photography (2020), the Lucie Award for Humanitarian Photography (2019), and the Rees Visionary Award by Amref Health Africa (2019).

Muholi is represented by Yancey Richardson Gallery in New York and Southern Guild Gallery in Cape Town and New York. The exhibition at the Hasselblad Center is on view from 10 October 2026 –4 April 2027.

Curators: Louise Wolthers and Dragana Vujanović Östlind from the Hasselblad Foundation, with Lufuno Ramadwa from the Muholi Art Institute.

For the fifth consecutive year, the Hasselblad Foundation is collaborating with the Gothenburg-based camera company Hasselblad, which honours this year’s award recipient by including a new camera as part of the prize.

About the Hasselblad Foundation
The Hasselblad Foundation was established in 1979 in accordance with Erna and Victor Hasselblad’s will after they sold the Hasselblad camera company. The purpose of the foundation is to promote scientific education and research in photography and the natural sciences. The annual, inter- national Hasselblad Award has been presented since 1980 and is the world’s largest award in photography.

The foundation holds a photography collection focusing on Hasselblad Award winners and Nordic photographers. The Hasselblad Center is the foundation’s exhibition space, situated in the Gothenburg Museum of Art. Stipends for photographic advancement are awarded annually, and the foundation itself is engaged in the field of academic and artistic research through the publication of books, symposiums, and collaborations with Swedish and international universities.

Anastasia Samoylova: Atlantic Coast

By Anastasia Samoylova

Publisher : Aperture and the Norton Museum of Art

2025 | 144 pages

Anastasia Samoylova: Atlantic Coast opens a vast, quietly unsettling portrait of the American East Coast — one in which nostalgia, dislocation and transformation are sewn into the landscape itself. In this new monograph, Samoylova retraces the route pioneered by Berenice Abbott in 1954, journeying from Florida to Maine to revisit the places Abbott once documented, and to observe what has become of them decades later. Her images — in vivid color and stark black and white — reveal the tension between myth and reality, between promises of progress and the traces of decay or displacement.

Where once small towns and coastal communities had a certain stillness, Samoylova finds change carved into facades and roadside signs, into suburban sprawl and shuttered shopfronts. She frames these scenes with a photographer’s patience and a poet’s sensitivity — capturing abandoned diners, empty motels, decaying houses, ghostly intersections. At the same time, there is stubborn life: occasional portraits of people, wildlife, reminders that behind every sign of decline, someone, something endures.

Her book does not simply document physical places. It traces the shifting contours of identity, belonging and memory in a nation where the open road has long symbolized freedom — and where that ideal has become tangled with consumerism, environmental degradation, and socio-economic upheaval. Through Atlantic Coast, Samoylova asks whether the “American Dream” remains intact, or if it has fractured along with the towns her car passes through.

Reading this volume is to experience a slow, attentive journey — as a witness, as a traveller, as someone invited to reconsider what America has become. Her photographs linger, subtly unsettling the viewer’s assumptions about beauty, progress and decline. In its silence and restraint, the book whispers that memory, identity and place are fragile — and that every road carries stories worth listening to.

Lisette Model

By Lisette Model

Publisher : Prestel

2026 | 256 pages

Lisette Model presents a definitive exploration of one of the most influential photographers of the twentieth century, whose bold vision reshaped the way urban life and society were captured on film. This stunning hardcover features over 200 reproductions, ranging from her early Parisian portraits to the striking images of New York streets that defined her career.

Model’s photographic journey began in Vienna and matured in France, where her keen eye for social observation developed. Early works, including portraits of idle elites in Nice, reveal her sharp sense of critique tempered by empathy. These images, at once confrontational and intimate, established her as a formidable observer of human behavior. After emigrating to the United States, Model brought this incisive approach to New York, producing iconic images such as the Coney Island Bather and the Cafe Metropole series, which juxtapose vitality, vulnerability, and the stark contrasts of city life.

Her lens captured both the glamour and grit of her surroundings: the bustling streets of the Lower East Side, the grandeur of high-society gatherings, and the nuanced everyday gestures that reveal the inner lives of her subjects. Model’s distinctive framing, bold compositions, and unflinching attention to human detail created a visual language that remains influential to this day.

This collection also includes lesser-known works from her travels along the U.S. West Coast and Venezuela, highlighting her continued exploration of character, form, and place. Insights from scholar Walter Moser contextualize her work within the broader trajectory of twentieth-century photography, illuminating her enduring impact as both an artist and a teacher.

Lisette Model is more than a retrospective; it is an immersive journey into a world seen through a lens of unvarnished reality and poetic observation. It celebrates a photographer whose fearless engagement with her subjects, combined with her artistic rigor, forged a path for generations of street and documentary photographers, offering an essential resource for enthusiasts and scholars alike.

All About Lisette Model

Fred Herzog: A Color Legacy

By Fred Herzog

Publisher : Hatje Cantz

2026 | 144 pages

Fred Herzog: A Color Legacy opens a fresh chapter on the streets of Vancouver and beyond, offering the public previously unseen images from the archives of a man whose eye for color and life defied the conventions of his time. Herzog’s work in the 1950s and 60s stands out because he chose Kodachrome — a decision nearly heretical when art photography still equated seriousness with black and white. What emerges through his Leica’s lens is a world awash in warm reds, neon signs, and the soft glow of streetlights — a world that feels alive, tactile, and tender.

After emigrating from Germany to Vancouver in 1953 and working by day as a medical photographer, Herzog spent his evenings and weekends roaming the city streets. He captured storefronts, everyday people going about their lives, second-hand shops, Chinatown alleys, decaying cars, neon reflections — details often overlooked, but rich with character. He treated photography not as artifice but as observation, documenting modern urban life with precision and empathy. His photographs turned ordinary city scenes into a tribute to human presence and urban texture.

The volume collects these rediscovered gems alongside his best-known photos, offering a more complete portrait of a photographer who stubbornly trusted color when many of his peers turned away. The images span Vancouver and also trace Herzog’s travels to the U.S., the Caribbean, Mexico and Central America, showing a restless spirit and a worldwide curiosity. Each frame is infused with intimacy, subtle humor, and a respect for the quotidian — light on one face, a reflection in a shop window, the curve of a car hood shimmering in rain.

Fred Herzog: A Color Legacy is not just a homage to a photographer but a statement about memory, time, and beauty in the urban fabric. It reminds us how much of a city’s soul lives in small moments — a street sign, a storefront, a quiet onlooker — and how color, long seen as frivolous in serious photography, can reveal more truth than monochrome ever could.

All About Fred Herzog

Critical Photojournalism: Contemporary Ethics and Practices

By Tara Pixley, Judy Walgren

Publisher : ‎ Routledge

2025 | 226 pages

An essential introduction to the complexities of visual representation, this book offers a critical new framework for understanding and practicing photojournalism in a global digital context.

Critical Photojournalism guides readers through a variety of ethical, technical and business skills, plus the mental health, self-care and safety considerations necessary to thrive in the field. Drawing on their extensive industry and teaching experience, the authors provide real-world advice on how to navigate the demands of the profession while addressing the impact that photojournalism has on society and ways that photojournalists can mitigate harm. Consideration is given to understanding and disrupting implicit bias and power structures in newsrooms, as well as issues around access, working in breaking news environments and balancing informed consent with varying media laws around the world. In accessible language, this book highlights the importance of collaboration and community engagement in contemporary photojournalism and encourages students to adopt a decolonial approach to their work. Readers will learn to balance the needs for accuracy and thoughtfulness with the priorities of a global, social-media-engaged audience.

This is a key textbook for those seeking a nuanced introduction to visual journalism and/or a fresh approach to their craft. This book is supported by a website which can be accessed at www.criticalphotojournalism.com. The website includes a full-length bonus chapter on video and photojournalism, interviews with professional visual journalists, further tips and tools, and a glossary of key terms.

Zanele Muholi: 2026 Hasselblad Award Laureate

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