Thirteen Works
Pieter Hugo
Internationally acclaimed photographer Pieter Hugo engages with documentary and art traditions to create intense and challenging images. Blurring the boundaries between documentary and fiction, his portraits can be read as a comment on identity, belonging and self-expression in post-colonial Africa. This exhibition brings together three of Hugo’s most compelling series of works.
“The Hyena and Other Men” (2005-07) Many myths surround the "Hyena Men" – itinerant minstrels who haunt the peripheries of Nigeria's cities. Accompanied by hyenas, rock pythons and baboons, these men earn a living by performing before crowds and selling traditional medicines. Hugo's extraordinary portraits of their liminal existence reveal a world of complex, codependent relationships, where familiar distinctions between dominance and submission, wildness and domesticity, tradition and modernity are constantly subverted.
“Nollywood”, (2008) explores the multilayered reality of the Nigerian film industry – the third largest in the world. Nollywood produces movies on its own terms, building on the rich African tradition of story-telling. Stars are local actors; plots confront the public with familiar situations of romance, comedy, witchcraft, bribery, and prostitution. The narrative is melodramatic – the aesthetic is loud, violent, and excessive. Dissatisfied by attempts to photograph on actual film sets, Hugo took his interpretation of these staged realities into another realm by assembling a team of actors and assistants to recreate the stereotypical myths and symbols that characterise Nollywood productions.
In “Permanent Error” (2009-10), Hugo captures the people and landscape of Agbogbloshie, an expansive dump of obsolete technology in Ghana. In this wasteland, referred to by locals as Sodom and Gomorrah, people and cattle co-exist on mountains of motherboards, monitors and discarded hard drives, far removed from the benefits accorded by the unrelenting advances of technology. The inhabitants survive largely by burning the electronic devices to extract copper and other metals. The resulting electronic waste contaminates rivers and lagoons with devastating ecological consequences.
David Akore, Agbogbloshie Market, Accra, Ghana, 2010
Pieter Hugo (born 1976 in Johannesburg) is a photographic artist living in Cape Town.
Major museum solo exhibitions have taken place at The Hague Museum of Photography, Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne, Ludwig Museum in Budapest, Fotografiska in Stockholm, MAXXI in Rome and the Institute of Modern Art Brisbane, among others. A solo exhibition will take place at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam in 2017. His work is represented in prominent public and private collections, among them the Museum of Modern Art, V&A Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art, J Paul Getty Museum, Walther Collection, Deutsche Börse Group, Folkwang Museum and Huis Marseille.
Hugo received the Discovery Award at the Rencontres d'Arles Festival and the KLM Paul Huf Award in 2008, the Seydou Keita Award at the Rencontres de Bamako African Photography Biennial in 2011, and was shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize in 2012. In 2015 he was shortlisted for the Prix Pictet and was chosen as the ‘In Focus’ artist for the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize at the National Portrait Gallery in London. Hugo lives and works in Cape Town.
Casmiar Onyenwe. Enugu, Nigeria, 2008
“I am of a generation that approaches photography with a keen awareness of the problems inherent in pointing a camera at anything. My work is deeply tied to my experience growing up in South Africa. It’s very hard to separate that, as much as I’d like to think it’s based on completely personal prerogatives, it’s still tied up in the topography of where I grew up and the constant negotiation of that space. It’s a problematic place.”
Organised in partnership with MAC, Belfast. The works on show were originally produced for the exhibition I will go there, take me home – curated by Gregory McCartney as part of MAC’s Guest Curator Programme in 2015. With thanks to Pieter Hugo, Deslynne Hill at Stevenson, Cape Town and to Hugh Mulholland, MAC Belfast.
Exhibition dates
June 25th - August 21st 2016
Gallery information
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Open 6 days:
Tuesday - Saturday, 11am - 5pm
Open Mondays by appointment for ongoing education, artists archiving and training.
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Closed for bank holidays and public holidays
Admission is free
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Gallery of Photography Ireland
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Temple Bar,
Dublin D02 X406, Ireland