DeLovie Kwagala: Photographing Queer Life in Africa

DeLovie Kwagala is a Ugandan non-binary queer photographer and social activist. Their work sits deep in the African context, and it insists on one thing above all: African stories carry their own dignity, and the camera's job is to show it.

Kwagala taught themselves photography, pushed along by social activism, human rights work, and advocacy — particularly for women. They are now based in Johannesburg, South Africa, and they are the first known non-binary queer photographer from Uganda, a country where homosexuality is criminalized. Every frame they make carries that risk, and that refusal.

The photographs deal with identity, belonging, gender, sexuality, and social injustice, and they keep landing on queer expression as something to celebrate. The celebration is the resistance. Colonial narratives and heteropatriarchal structures still shape daily life in Uganda and South Africa, and Kwagala's images push back on the oldest lie among them — that homosexuality is 'un-African.' Their lens holds the struggles and the joys of queer community in the same frame.

'The Quingdom ~ In Transition' makes the point in pictures. Subjects like Raldy and Authentically Plastic hold the frame boldly and unapologetically, their queerness worn in the open against every norm built to erase it. The images argue for recognition over suppression, and they show how many shapes queer identity takes.

Visibility is the politics here. A photograph of Jesse, from the same collection, shows gender fluidity as an act of fearlessness. In places where being visibly queer can get you hurt, standing in front of a camera is no small thing — it is part of a larger fight for tolerance, respect, and acceptance.

The work has drawn international recognition and pulled attention toward queer life in Uganda, South Africa, and across the continent. Kwagala keeps turning their lens toward local queer people and activists, and the photographs keep doing what the best activist art does: they make it harder to look away, and harder to keep repeating the old story.

You can follow and support Kwagala's work on Instagram.

Their photographs challenge stereotypes and unsettle easy ideas about gender, sexuality, and identity. They work as a mirror for queer communities in Africa — and as a window, for everyone else, into a world where every identity gets the dignity and respect it deserves.