Phalia (Portrait of Alice Walker); Zabat

This photograph is from a series of portraits of creative black women by Maud Sulter, who is of Ghanaian and Scottish parentage. The series is called Zabat and shows each woman as one of the nine Greek muses. The word Zabat describes an ancient ritual dance performed by women on occasions of power, and her use of it signifies Maud Sulter's call for a repositioning of black women in the history of photography.

The model here is the author and feminist Alice Walker, winner of the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her novel The Color Purple. Here she is represented as Urania, the muse of comedy and the bringer of flowers.

Maud Sulter produced the Zabat series for Rochdale Art Gallery in 1989, the 150th anniversary of the invention of photography. It was a direct response to the lack of a black presence at other celebratory events and exhibitions. Here we see the conventions of Victorian portrait photography under the command of a black woman photographer. The backdrop, props and pose are all retained but the image is transformed with African clothes and, most importantly, by the resolute black woman at its centre.